Analecta
by N. Y. Smith
Summary: The reminiscences of a guy lucky enough to have become President.
1. Prologue

Title:Analecta  
Author:N. Y. Smith  
Email:minismith@aol.com  
Category:AU (very), JDR, Josh POV, Angst, WIP  
Disclaimer:Not mine.  
Summary:The reminiscences of a guy lucky enough to have become President.  
Spoilers:Through Season Three  
Author's Notes:Contains references to 9/11/2001. Amy-free universe.   
  
  
  
  
It was surreal: a Catholic standing in the midst of mixed Protestants and a couple of lapsed Jews whose current faith, politics, had been torn from its foundation. The pen hovered over the paper, his eyes closed in supplication much as the first Josiah Bartlet must have done when faced with a circumstance of similar gravity, before, heavily, sadly, he scratched his name on the appropriate line. Handing the pen to his bodyman, he sighed heavily, "God help us all."  
And so it was Josiah Bartlet became a wartime President.  
  
Many things have been written about us–President Bartlet and the people who surrounded him. Some are true; some are not. Invariably the author tries to assign some greater meaning to the events, some historical significance. Not me. I'll leave history to the historians. They wouldn't be interested in anything that follows in this little analecta (that's a Sam Seaborn-caliber word for a collection of stories) because they seem to have forgotten that history always contains a story. So here is my collection of stories about people who made history. You don't have to assign meaning to them; they're just the reminiscences of a guy lucky enough to have become President.  
  
Joshua Lyman, AD 2027 


	2. 23 Elul 5761

23 Elul 5761  
  
It had begun with the attacks on New York and the Pentagon. I had, of course, been at work "stalking" Congressmen as my assistant, Donna Moss, referred to it. Leo and the President had been away schmoozing voters in Florida – it's never too early to court those re-election votes, is it? Anyway, I was on the phone harassing another recalcitrant Congressman when Donna appeared in my doorway, ashen and shaky. Immediately, I covered the mouthpiece with my suddenly sweaty palm. "Donna?"  
  
Her mouth moved, but her voice didn't squeak in until the second syllable. "Nancy McNally on line three." She swallowed hard. "She says it's urgent."  
  
I mumbled a word or two before, basically, hanging up on the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee. "Josh Lyman."  
  
"We have a Defcon Delta situation, Josh."  
  
My mind immediately spun back to the security briefings then through the innumerable drills and produced what had become an automatic response. "I'll need confirmation."  
  
Her response matched the current codes. Just as she spoke the C-SPAN feeds cut to CNN and a sight that, over twenty years later, I still cannot fully comprehend. "An airliner has just crashed into the World Trade Center."  
  
Mutely I stared at the screen.  
  
"Josh?" Nancy McNally interrupted just as a dark-suited agent replaced Donna in my office doorway.  
  
"Does the President know?" The clock on my wall read eight-fifty-five.  
  
"He is being secured." She then rattled off instructions for "crashing" or locking down the White House. No, the President would not be returning here, at least for now. I heard a fighter jet scream overhead and could see more dark-suited agents coursing through the bullpen. She had no more said, "Do you understand?" than the unthinkable happened again.  
  
"Do you see this?" I asked in horror.  
  
"Confirmed?" she asked someone on her end. "Yeah," she spoke to me again. "Confirm second crash." A voice mumbled in the background. "Confirm Eagle is secure?" she asked the voice. "The President is secure," she said to me. "You should be prepared to evacuate the White House."  
  
"Acknowledged," I said with a dry mouth. With a grunt, she disconnected. "Where is the Vice-President?" I asked the suit that had positioned itself in my door.  
  
"He asked to go to the bunker, Mr. Lyman."  
  
My dry mouth turned sour. "Fitzwallace in the Situation Room?"  
  
The Suit nodded as I dialed the Officer of the Day.  
  
"Initiate 'crash,'" I said needlessly but necessarily. "Then prepare for evacuation." I didn't even wait for his acknowledgment before striding into the bullpen. "We're only locked down, for now," I squeezed Donna's trembling hand, "but call the Senior Staff assistants and tell them to prepare to evacuate within the hour."  
  
"What's going on?" Her eyes could be so round when she was terrified.  
  
"That's what I'm gonna find out. Gone to Leo's." All of the faces I met had the same look, terror and disgust, leaving me to wonder if I looked that way and hoping I did not. I found Margaret at her desk with a tear-streaked face. Jabbing a finger at the door and receiving a nod, I entered. Toby and CJ were pacing while Sam was leaning against the armchair. They each shot a question at me, which I ignored until the phone buzzed and Leo's voice emanated from the speaker. "Josh, hold on," he ordered, and a muffled conversation ensued in the background. "What's it like there?" his voice sounded closer.  
  
"We're at full lockdown, Leo," I answered. "Staff is okay, for now, but we've got to tell them something soon."  
  
"Like what?" Leo asked.  
  
"Like what the hell's going on, Leo," Toby Ziegler huffed.  
  
"You'll know when I do!" Leo barked. "The FAA is shutting down New York. We need to go on the air ASAP. How soon can you be ready?"  
  
"How soon can we get a security briefing?" Toby asked.  
  
Leo's voice asked a muffled question before responding, "Be in the Situation Room in five."  
  
Toby nodded and disappeared with CJ and Sam.   
  
"What do you need from me, Leo?"  
  
"Are you alone?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"We're under attack, Josh. Fitz and Nancy both say to consider the White House a primary tactical target. Do you know what that means?"  
  
I swallowed hard. "We're at a Defcon Delta crash now, Leo. I've already ordered all sections to prepare to evacuate within the hour."  
  
Static popped. "Are we ready for this?"  
  
"Don't you mean am I ready for this?"  
  
"Josh, I didn't . . ."  
  
"It's okay, Leo. I'm not sure any of us is ready for this."  
  
A knock preceded Toby's reappearance in the room. "CJ has cleared nine-thirty with the networks, Leo. You should be receiving the script in the next ten minutes."  
  
"That's only ten minutes lead time, Leo," I warned.  
  
"Make it five, Toby."  
  
"Okay," Toby agreed reluctantly and left.  
  
"I'm counting on you, Josh," Leo warned. "Over a thousand people work at the White House."  
  
"Nearly two-thousand, Leo." I almost choked. "I won't let them down. Or you."  
  
"Good," he replied just as I heard the President's voice in the background. "I've got to go. Good luck to you."  
  
I wondered how many of his fellow pilots he'd said that to in his last war. "Good luck to us all." Silence indicated the line was disconnected. I gathered myself for a moment before opening the door. "Are you okay, Margaret?"  
  
"I'm fine," her face and her trembling voice belied her response. Quickly, she lowered her head, trying to hide her tears behind a curtain of titian.  
  
Before thinking, I patted her quaking hand. "Do you need some help getting ready?"  
  
She shook her head and I strode down the hall, the Suit my ever-present shadow. He was, as you may have guessed, Secret Service; I didn't usually rate that kind of protection but, as the ranking member of the Senior Staff during a Defcon Delta alert, I did rate an escort. And so he followed, silently, like Lurch: I almost expected to meet Gomez and Morticia around the corner. I met Sam, instead, reading the President's script as he scurried to the secure fax machine in the Situation Room. His eyes met mine, terrified, before continuing on his mission. The next few minutes are like a montage in my head: Donna's terrified looks, everyone's terrified looks, standing silently in the bullpen listening to the President's speech, more "stiff-upper lip" performances, and then, Donna handing me the phone, "It's Nancy McNally."  
  
The National Security Advisor was even more curt than usual. "The Pentagon has been hit, Josh. Evacuate."  
  
"I'll need confirmation," I repeated automatically.  
  
Immediately she responded with the doomsday code confirmation.  
  
"Acknowledged," I responded then dialed the Officer of the Day. "This is the Deputy Chief of Staff. Dayword," I repeated the word I'd memorized, "Codeword," and continued with the second half. "Evacuate all White House personnel," receiving only an acknowledgment before hanging up. Donna's expression betrayed terror and I squeezed her shoulder before proceeding to the Oval Office and gathering the items on the checklist that had appeared in my hand and giving them to my shadow. As I left the Oval, I could see, through the windows, people streaming from the building, onto the Mall, into Lafayette Park. By the time I returned to my office, Donna was no where to be found. Following the security plan, I proceeded to my assigned station, and paused, determined to wait until everyone had cleared the building. My shadow had other ideas, though.  
  
"Mr. Lyman, you have to go."  
  
"I'm not leaving until everyone's safe."  
  
"That's not your job, sir."  
  
"The hell it isn't. I'm staying."  
  
A shadow crossed my Shadow's face, as if he were considering mayhem, before he pushed at his earpiece and relayed, "The building's clear, sir. You can go now."  
  
I shook my head. "No." Desperately I turned around, searching the place where she, Donna, should be. She wasn't there. Oh, God, she wasn't there. I spun around again, "Where is she?"  
  
"Who?" the Shadow asked.  
  
"Donna Moss, my assistant. She's supposed to be here."  
  
Shadow spoke into his sleeve before shaking his head. "No location on Ms. Moss is available. You have to go to your designated location now, sir." He loomed over me, but I spun around again, scanning hundreds of terrified faces without seeing the one I sought.  
  
"Now, Mr. Lyman," the Shadow insisted.  
  
The crystallization of my thoughts into a truth-revealing orb was immediate. I had been an idiot. Since I had realized I loved her, and intellectually pursued that thought to its logical conclusion of home and family, I had also realized that I could never share that with her, at least, not for long. According to the doctors, the three idiots in a pick-up truck had taken years from me–years that, if I followed my heart, would leave Donna alone with small children and a car payment and a house note and everything. So, I feigned disinterest–poorly most tell me now–watching her date Gomer after Gomer, praying that each would be the one who could give her everything she wanted and be there to share it with her. But now, searching vainly for her in the semi-ordered chaos of the evacuation, I realized that, if the tables were turned, I would rather be left with everything than nothing. Just one more chance, please, I prayed to a God in whom I barely believed.  
  
And there she was.  
  
Without a word I grabbed her hand and dragged her to the place where the Senior Staff would await transport to the infamous "undisclosed location." Expecting surprise and resistance, I was shocked to encounter acceptance and, dare I say, envy in the countenances of my colleagues. The security team was not nearly so understanding, denying her access despite my pleas, arguments, and orders. I closed my eyes for a moment, then jerked my watch off my wrist, holding it out to her. "This isn't the way I wanted, or the time I wanted, but it's something I've wanted for a very long time, Donna. Would you . . ."  
  
"Yes," she smiled before I could finish the question. She knew. She knew what the exchange of something valuable meant. She'd cared enough to find out. Snagging the watch from my hand, she slipped in on her wrist as though it represented her fondest wish. In a way, for both of us, it did.   
  
I returned her smile, brushed my lips past hers, before turning to the security officer. "She's my wife; put her with the First Lady."  
  
"Mr. Lyman . . ."  
  
"What the hell are you waiting for?" I nearly screamed, then grinned at her like the imbecile I'm sure everyone thought I was.  
  
"Now, Mr. Lyman . . ." My shadow called impatiently. Sam and CJ had already embarked, but Toby had lagged behind, watching and seeing all.  
  
I turned back to Donna and held out my right palm. Hers met mine and we twined our fingers together. "I am my beloved's," I vowed.  
  
She smiled and with a squeeze replied, "And my beloved is mine." With glistening eyes we parted, each to our appointed places. Toby waited to walk beside me.  
  
"Grand gesture. Do you understand what you just did?"  
  
"Do you know what today is, Toby? In Hebrew?"  
  
"Something in Elul," he replied. "5761. Why?"  
  
"So I can put it on a Ketubah."  
  
"You're serious?"  
  
I nodded. "It's about time, don't you think?"  
  
"Past time," he chastised, but paused at the door of our transport and held out his hand, "Mazel tov."  
  
"Shalom," I replied, joining mine to his for an instant, then following him into our waiting transport.  
  
"From your mouth to God's ear," he looked skeptical for a moment but then we were crowded together in our blacked-out transport for our "buggy ride." I jammed on the headphones offered insistently by the radio operator and adjusted the boom microphone.  
  
"The Pentagon has been hit," I shouted over the engine roar.  
  
"Jetliner?" Sam asked, then returned to tapping madly on his laptop when I nodded.  
  
"Say again?" I cocked my head to hear the rest. "Another jetliner has been hijacked and is vectored toward Washington."  
  
"The Capitol?" Toby's voice rose and his forehead creased. CJ grasped his forearm but he didn't notice.  
  
"Maybe. They can't tell."  
  
"Why not?" CJ replied with Toby.  
  
"The pilot turned off the plane's radar beacon." Our transport pitched sharply, sending us grasping for handholds. I listened again before replying, "Hell, yes, get them out of there!"  
  
"What?" Toby asked impatiently.  
  
"They're evacuating the Capitol. Leadership is on its own little exodus." Toby choked back a question but I asked into my mic. "Do you have a location on Congresswoman Wyatt?"  
  
Long minutes passed, punctuated by Sam's nervous keytaps.  
  
"Say again?"  
  
"Where is she?" Toby shouted.  
  
"She's confirmed at her appointed location, Toby. She's okay."  
  
After than the news came in spurts–false alarms, evacuations, the eventual crash of the airliner in Pennsylvania before we returned to the White House. It was bedlam for an hour or so until the panic subsided and the demands of each person's duty deadened their senses–at least for everyone else. CJ and Carol, Sam, Toby and Ginger, each were huddled together in an extended "divide and conquer" task session. My assistant, however, had not returned–which, since I was stuck in the Situation Room until Leo physically returned, was not necessarily a bad thing. With the Vice-President safely tucked away, the President returned to the White House by mid-afternoon, cameras rolling as the Senior Staff greeted him on the South Lawn. With a strong and determined stride and flinty New England carriage he marched from Marine One through the White House to the Situation Room. Then, only there where neither camera nor junior staffer could see, his eyes softened for a moment, his shoulders stooped slightly, and, for the first time, I noticed a tiny tremble in his hand as he held it out to first to CJ– "How're ya doin', Claudia Jean?"  
  
"I'm fine, Mr. President."  
  
–Then to Sam–"You must have known people there--"  
  
"Yes, I did, Mr. President."  
  
–Then to Toby–"Vengeance is the Lord's, Toby."  
  
"Vengeance isn't Jewish, Mr. President."  
  
–Then to me–"Thank you for holding down the fort, Josh."  
  
"Welcome home, Mr. President."  
  
Leo followed the President, greeting each of us with a grave handshake, prolonging mine to tug until I fell in step beside him. "What's going on?"  
  
"We're hangin' in there, Leo. The staff is doing okay, I think, doing what needs to be done despite being in shock." I ran down the rest of his checklist, hesitating at the door to the Situation Room.  
  
"Come on," Leo beckoned and for the next hours I became his shadow, marveling at his passion and dispassion about the current situation, wondering if I could ever match his performance–and praying nobody would ever have to. Occasionally, increasingly, he would ask my opinion about something. Although my initial response was a fish-eyed stare, pretty quickly I found out that he truly needed my viewpoint which, seemingly, was diametrically opposed to everyone else's in the room. After I asked what would happen if we made no military response, the soldiers looked at me like I had grown a third eye in the middle of my forehead. Fortunately, a gold-braided aide handed me a note which I showed to Leo and, with a nod, hurried to the First Lady's offices.   
  
Lilly Mays, the First Lady's Chief of Staff, met me by the receptionist's desk with a handshake. "Donna's in my office, Josh," she paused, "and the First Lady would like to see you when you're through."  
  
I mumbled thanks and slipped into the office, no more crossing the threshold before finding my arms filled with her. "Are you okay?" the weight of my clasped hands behind her drew her against me.  
  
She nodded tearfully, arms encircling my shoulders lifting her face until it was even with mine. "I was so afraid."  
  
"I know."  
  
"What you did before," fear dulled her eyes and she pulled back, "protecting me by saying I was your wife, was very kind, Josh, but if you want to change your mind . . ."  
  
"I meant every word." I pulled her close again. "But you may want to reconsider."  
  
She pulled away and crossed her arms. "Why?"  
  
I jammed my hands in my pockets. "I'm a target of both a Grand Jury and a Congressional investigation, Donna. I may not be employed, or employable, much longer."  
  
"So, I'll work and you'll be a kept man," she deadpanned. "Next?"  
  
"We're on the verge of war, Donna. As a member of the Senior Staff, I'm a likely target for retribution. Anyone near me . . ."  
  
"I'll be near you," she cut me off with a headshake, "whether we're married or not, and you know it. What else have you got?"  
  
My back twinged and I backed against the door facing, head lolling against the cool wood before meeting her clear gaze. "I'm forty years old, Donna. I don't know how you found out, but I know you know how little time I have left: just enough time to leave you with teenagers, a mortgage, car notes . . ."  
  
She stepped forward, fingers brushing lightly against my cheeks. "I'd rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special, Joshua."  
  
"Quoting 'Steel Magnolias'?" I chuffed.  
  
"It's true." She captured my face between her hands. "Do you love me, Joshua Lyman?"  
  
I covered her hands with mine. "Yes."  
  
"And I love you." She leaned into me, wrapping my arms around her before enfolding me in her embrace. "Everything else is just crap."  
  
"Leo McGarry, the poet laureate of the Bartlet administration," I chuckled before meeting her gaze. "You're sure? About the marriage thing?"  
  
"I'm sure," she promised, then prevented any further objections with a kiss made even more electrifying by the years taken to build up to it. "Besides," she panted for air while remaining in my arms, "a case could be made that we've been married a lot longer." She pulled away and smoothed her clothing.  
  
"Since when?" I adjusted my jacket and tugged at my waist band, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.  
  
She raked her fingers through her hair and blotted her lipstick with the handkerchief I'd proffered. "Since New Hampshire. When you gave me your campaign badge."  
  
"If only I'd been that smart," I smoothed my hair and buttoned my coat. "I could have saved us from a lot of suffering at the hands of Mandy and an endless string of Gomers."  
  
"Yes, you could have," she smoothed my tie and twined her fingers through mine. "See you later?"  
  
I nodded and opened the door, my voice switching back to 'boss' timbre. "Make sure that room in the basement still has the couches, blankets and pillows and make sure every Senior Staff member who has a couch has a blanket and a pillow, too." I smiled at her, regretfully, "Nobody's gonna sleep for a while."  
  
She nodded and, with a little wave, left just before Lilly Mays opened the door to the First Lady's Sitting Room.  
  
"Josh," Abigail Bartlet greeted with a tired smile.  
  
"Ma'am."  
  
She waived me to a chair. "It was very nice to have Donna's company on our little excursion."  
  
I leaned forward, "Ma'am, I'm sorry about that; I . . ."  
  
"Don't be sorry, Josh." She leaned against one arm and clasped her hands. "Is it the real thing?"  
  
I rested my elbows on my knees, my hands clasped between them. "Yes," I said softly.  
  
"She knows everything, Josh? About your time?"  
  
I nodded and silence stretched between us before I spoke. "When you found out about the President's MS, about how little time you might have left, did you consider leaving him? To save yourself from the pain of watching what you know will come?"  
  
"For an instant," she admitted, "until I realized that I, too, would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special."  
  
"Has every woman on earth seen that movie?" I grinned.  
  
"At least twice," she returned my smile and stood. "All the best to you both, Josh."  
  
I rose but before I could thank her the door burst open.  
  
"Abby, are you okay?" the President asked breathlessly, stopping short upon seeing me.  
  
"Thank you, Josh," the First Lady offered her hand.  
  
"Thank you, Ma'am," I returned and pulled the door closed behind me, enchanted by the simple, caring embrace, not of the President and First Lady, but of Jed and Abby, thirty years joined. "All the best to you both," I breathed before scurrying back to the Situation Room. 


	3. Faith

Faith  
  
History records the public events of the next days, the dashed hopes, the sorrow, the outrage. It doesn't record the days we functioned with only stolen moments of sleep, of meetings ended when one or more of the participants nodded off, of quick hugs and hand squeezes Donna and I would exchange as we passed in the halls, of endless nights watching the excavation at Ground Zero, of comforting Sam and Toby when they learned another friend had simply not come home. Finally, on Friday afternoon, when the weight of all that had happened threatened to crush us all, Toby's face appeared in my doorway.  
  
"Busy, Josh?"  
  
"I'm not sure anymore," I admitted. "What's up?"  
  
"I, um," he fidgeted with his hand, "I thought you might want to go to temple tonight."  
  
I started to decline, but an ancient need tugged within me. "Sure. What time?"  
  
"Six-thirty."  
  
I nodded. "Can I bring Donna?"  
  
He smiled, the first I'd seen on his face in days. "Sure. Bring your goy girlfriend."  
  
"Goy wife," I corrected.  
  
"Whose goy wife?" Donna breezed, as well as she could after three days virtually without sleep, past Toby, setting file folders on my desk.  
  
"My goy wife," I confirmed and Toby flushed scarlet.  
  
"So I've been promoted from shiksa?" she grinned.  
  
"Only in the office," I deadpanned and Toby chuckled.  
  
"You're disgusting," she chided.  
  
"Yes, but that's why you love me."  
  
"Only in your dreams, Joshua."  
  
"Not for long," I leered.  
  
"I'm gonna be sick," Toby carped with a smile before leaving.  
  
"What's up?" Donna slumped into the visitor's chair.  
  
"Toby," I answered while rummaging through the drawer where Donna stashed my personal   
things, "wants to go to temple tonight."  
  
"And?"  
  
"And," I chirped victoriously, plucking a yarmulke from the drawer, "he wants us to go with him."  
  
"And you?"  
  
I handed her the yarmulke and, leaning precariously, she slipped it into my jacket pocket without removing it from the coat rack. "My grandfather nearly died for his beliefs," I replied softly. "It's time I started living for mine."  
  
"By taking your shiksa wife to temple with you?" She grinned.  
  
"My goy wife," I corrected. "First to temple, then home." I let the word home hang there for a moment. "Okay?"  
  
"Better than okay." She stood. "Just remember this on Sunday when I make you take me to church."  
  
"Trying to proselytize me already?"  
  
Her face was suddenly serious. "No, Josh, I would never . . ."  
  
"I'm only teasing, Donna. Go. Get ready to leave this place for a few hours." She mock saluted and left me alone, my gaze finally resting on my grandfather's picture.  
  
It had been a long time since I'd been to temple. I hadn't realized quite how long until I stumbled half-way through the shamesh. Donna, on the other hand, was totally lost. Flipping from page to page in the siddur, she finally gave up and listened. Toby was restless, glancing at his watch, then back to the door, all the while reciting his prayers flawlessly. It was about the point I faltered when I heard him sigh and he waved his hand for us to scoot toward the center of the bench seat. Only a glimpse of the red hair was necessary for me to understand his relief. With a quiet smile he twined his fingers with his companion.  
  
Hi, Andy, Donna leaned over and mouthed silently.  
  
Congresswoman Andrea Wyatt waved a greeting before joining Toby in recitation. Haltingly, I joined them, the nearly-forgotten training of my youth returning in fits and spurts. Afterward, we stood in the humid early evening making small talk with Senator Wilbank's Chief of Staff, Jake Wasser, and Ben Angel from Justice. While Andy Wyatt joined in the conversation, Donna stood quietly, eyes so intently scanning the crowd that she didn't notice someone sneaking up on her.  
  
"Mommy!" a tiny voice cried while the owner of the voice wrapped itself around her leg.  
  
"Hi!" she smiled and knelt, gathering a toddler boy with cottony curls into her arms. "Is your mommy around here?"  
  
The sight of her, Donna, with a child in her arms left me speechless. We hadn't even discussed children.  
  
A terrified voice cried, "Isaiah?" before spotting the child in Donna's arms. With a relieved sigh of thanks she retrieved the child.  
  
Hugging her empty arms to herself as if to warm them, she whispered with a shy smile, "See, Joshua, Jewish children do come with blonde hair and curls."  
  
I slipped my arm around her waist and we left Toby and Andy to continue along their convergent paths. Our path took us to the home we'd agreed upon in stolen moments, my apartment, by way of hers. I showered while she unpacked then, while she showered, I rifled through my sock drawer for the velvet box I'd stowed there months before. She emerged from the bathroom in a steamy cloud, towel wrapped around her head. Years of staying in adjoining rooms had long ago dispelled the mystique of sleepwear. I wore pyjama bottoms and she wore waffle knit pyjamas. I couldn't stifle the smirk.  
  
"What?" She tugged at her pyjamas. "You were expecting a marabou peignoir?"  
  
"I don't even know what that is."  
  
"Feathers and chiffon."  
  
"Feathers make me sneeze," I stepped closer to her.  
  
"And chiffon is too cold," she closed the distance until I could feel her breath on my chest. "What are you hiding?" She reached around behind me and pulled out my hand.  
  
Shock registered on her face at the sight of the velvet ring box.  
  
"I bought these," I stammered, "not long after Rosslyn." Her eyes were looking directly into   
mine. "I was going to ask you at Christmas but . . ." I shrugged.  
  
"But you kept them safe until now."  
  
I removed the smaller band from the box and slipped it on the ring finger of her right hand. With a shy smile, she did the same for me.  
  
"I am my beloved's," she whispered, her lips brushing mine.  
  
"And my beloved is mine," I answered, hesitating, giving her one last chance to change her mind.  
  
Eyes wide open, fixed on mine, she framed my face with her hands, the ring cool against my cheek. Returning her smile, my hands fulfilled a long-standing urge and settled on her hips. "Is this for real?" her breath tickled my cheek.  
  
"Yeah," I whispered. "And it's forever." 


	4. Hope

Hope

by N. Y. Smith

  
  


I had just grasped her hand, tugging her to the car in the bright morning light when I caught the lens flare in the hazy edges of my vision. I jerked my head around and saw the photographer grin.

"What is it?"

"Nothin'," I lied, but Donna followed my line of sight and saw what I saw.

"Oh, God," she groaned, "you'd think they'd have more important things going on right now."

I pulled on the car door and gently lowered her inside, "You'd think."

At the White House we parted ways, she to our office and I directly to CJ Cregg's. CJ barely looked up when I propped myself against her door frame, hands stuffed in my pockets. "Good morning, Josh."

"There was a photographer outside my apartment this morning."

She regarded me over the frames of her glasses. "And did this hack photograph anything that's going to give me a headache?"

Just as a what was undoubtedly a stupid grin split my face I slowly pulled my hands from my pockets and crossed my arms in front of me, the right one on top. "Probably," I admitted.

CJ stood, blinking slowly for several seconds. "Oh, hell," she snatched the glasses from her face. "Tell me that's not what it looks like."

"What does it look like?"

She walked around her desk and planted herself four feet from me. "A wedding ring."

"Wrong hand."

"Engagement?"

"Betrothal."

She made a circling motion with her glasses. "Which is?"

"The time during which you're waiting for the law to catch up with your heart."

"And when will that be?"

"Mid-October."

"Any reason to rush?" she asked carefully.

"God, I hope so."

"Me, too," Donna sidled against me and grasped my upper arm with her right hand, ring gleaming, before returning my stupid grin.

The Press Secretary fixed us in a laser-beam glare for several minutes before scrubbing the back of her hand against wet cheeks. Then it happened. For the first time in days, weeks really, we are favored with a thousand-watt, gap-toothed, CJ Cregg smile. "It's about damn time."

"We certainly think so," I said quietly.

"I hope Leo shares your opinion," Donna sighed. "He wants to see us."

Leo did not share CJ's enthusiasm. He thundered, he threatened, but underneath the anger seemed to be a sense of relief. Of course, the fact that the First Lady approved may have had something to do with it. Few people bucked Abbey Bartlet-which explains how I came to be in my office, dressing with Sam Seaborn, on the Thursday before Columbus Day.

"When did you know?" Sam asked quietly, ends of his cravat grasped in trembling fingers. "That you loved her, I mean."

The corner of my lips curled upward as he smoothed his own necktie. "In the hospital. When I woke up and wished hers would have been the first face I saw rather than Leo and the President. Why?"

"You were only three years behind the rest of us," he gibed but the look on my face provoked a more thoughtful response as he smoothed his tie. "Mallory called."

"I'm hearing things," I shook my head, as if clearing it, before slipping on my black jacket. "I thought you just said Mallory called."

Sam nodded, putting on his own coat.

"What did she want?"

"She wants to get back together."

"And leave the hockey-stud?"

"That's over." He studied his shoes. "She said what he was doing-playing hockey-was trivial. It wasn't important enough."

"Sam . . ."

"So I told her I was quitting-leaving the White House. That I couldn't live like we've had to anymore."

My hands stopped working. "You're leaving?"

"We're the palace eunuchs, Josh. The President, Leo, even Toby has had his chance at a family. But not us. We've been so busy protecting our Way of Life that we've not even noticed Life passing us by. Has it been worth it? Can you honestly say it's been worth it?"

I shook my head. "But I'm changing that in about fifteen minutes." Nervously, I twisted the gold band that would soon be moving from my right to my left hand. "So she said good bye because you're leaving?"

"She said it didn't matter. She said that even if I were digging ditches that I'd find a way to make sure it counted."

"Sounds like she loves you."

"You think so?" he said, hope lifting the timbre of his voice.

A gentle chuff punctuated my response. "Do you? Love her, you know, still?"

Now he studied my shoes. "Yeah, dammit," he said ruefully. "What do you think? About Mallory and me, I mean?"

"I think I'll be wearing this suit again in the very near future." I looked at my watch. "And I think it's time to go downstairs."

Sam checked his watch then showed me. "It's fifteen minutes early, Josh."

"Ah, man. Donna must have reset it last night." I pulled on my suit coat with a mock grimace.

"Good for her; somebody needs to take care of you." Sam pulled on his own coat, adjusting the tie. "Are you taking care of her?"

A leering remark perched on my tongue but I swallowed it. "I hope so; I plan on spending the rest of my life trying."

"Guys," Charlie leaned in my door, "it's time."

Finally, nearly one month after we'd exchanged our own private vows, we stood in the Residence beneath the chuppah my parents had used, the one they'd saved for my sister Joanie, and completed the public manifestation of the covenant into which we'd already entered: we signed the marriage contract. When my cellphone rang later, as we dozed in our own bed after the quiet reception, I knew what news would be interrupting my sleep.

"Who was that?" Donna murmured sleepily.

"Leo," I answered and she hummed. "I think you should go home to Wisconsin when your parents go."

"I thought I told you no already."

"I still think you should go."

She propped herself on an elbow, now completely awake. "What's happened?"

I stared at the tiny baseball glove she'd given me just hours earlier, after we'd returned home, the spread of its webbing measuring barely larger than the palm of my hand. 'To the Big Dude from the Little Dude-to-be,' the card had read. "I just think you'll be safer there. You and the Little Dude."

"Dudette," she corrected, then prodded gently, "Joshua?"

I rolled onto my back. "We're eliminating the enemy's technological infrastructure as we speak."

She scooted closer, still on her side, sliding her right leg over mine. "Meaning we're bombing the hell out of their military installations."

"Yeah." I took a deep breath. "Washington will be a certain target for retaliation, Donna."

"I know."

"You'll be safer in Wisconsin."

"Possibly."

"Then you'll go?"

"Not a chance."

"Why?"

"Are you going?"

"You know I can't, Donna."

"And neither can I."

"Donna . . ."

"Josh, we can't ask Americans to be brave if we're not prepared to do the same. I'm staying." 

Defiance lit her eyes and determination flushed her skin crimson, even in the half-light. "Any kid would be lucky to have you for a mom," awe roughened my voice.

She pulled closer, her head on my shoulder, hand covering my hand that rested on my chest. "And you for a dad," she nuzzled my shoulder and we lay, still and silent, for several minutes before I splayed my hand across her still-flat belly.

"Can you feel him move yet?"

"It's too soon." She covered my hand with hers, pressing gently until I felt a hardened knot deep within her. "There she is."

"He," I corrected gently, then pulled her closer, savoring the feel of us. "This is what I lived for."

On the next Tuesday, Evelyn Saunders, who had worked in the Senate Mail Room for thirty-two years, called in with a chest cold-her first sick days in six years. By dark she was dead. The anthrax letters had begun.


	5. Four Funerals and a Wedding (Sort of)

Four Funerals and a Wedding (sort of)   
  


There's really no such thing as a vacation when you work in the White House. Donna and I were, technically, still honeymooning after our wedding-which meant we only expected to work twelve hours a day rather than eighteen. And so it was that, since our schedule was so light, we were elected to represent the White House at the funeral of Evelyn Saunders.

First, let it be said that I hate funerals. When you've been as close to death as I was, and as I remain, you tend not to stand in its presence any more than absolutely necessary. Sometimes, however, your respect for the deceased surpasses your fear of your own mortality.

Evelyn Saunders was one of those people who brightened up your day even when she was having to help you fix something idiotic you'd done. Not that she ever had to pull my fat out of the fire. No. No way. Not me. Right. Never mind how. That's how a Connecticut Yankee found himself in a small country church in the Mississippi delta saying goodbye to a gracious Southern woman.

We'd flown commercial into Memphis and ridden down to the funeral with Congressman and Mrs. Williford from the Tennessee Eighth. The service had been very representative of Mrs. Saunders-very Southern, spiritual and full of music. Because she had worked for the Congress, the regional politicians still managed to make it a opportunity for hay-making while appearing appropriately grief-stricken. Maybe I'm being unfair. After all, Southern politicians are the ultimate political multi-taskers: they can, depending upon the audience, be outraged, saddened and gladdened about a particular issue. And I had brought my bride, my sweet Donna, and dropped her into the middle of this quagmire. I needn't have worried.

One of the things I love about my wife is that she is exactly what she appears to be. And, at the funeral of Evelyn Saunders, she was genuinely sad but compassionate with the stricken family. It was apparent to everyone in attendance. It showed in the pictures that appeared in the Washington papers the next day.

After the requisite schmoozing at dinner with the local Democratic leadership, we returned to The Peabody Hotel. Turning the elevator key that would take us to our room, I couldn't resist slipping my arm around her waist and guiding her into the Romeo and Juliet Suite. Hey, we were still technically on our honeymoon-- and it didn't cost the taxpayers a dime. We passed a quiet evening, barely making our 8:35 a.m. flight back to DC.

Our performance at the Saunders funeral fit perfectly into Gianelli's "Put a Young, Healthy Face on the Administration Master Plan"-which sounded suspiciously like my "Put a Young, Healthy Face on the Candidate Master Plan" in the first election. It involved trotting out the Senior Staff in a variety of political outings to prove that the administration was still vibrant and vital. As I said, our performance at the Saunders funeral made us the perfect representatives to attend the funerals of the three other anthrax victims. The second was in New York, the third in New Jersey. The last was in Milwaukee, a postal worker, and, since it was Thanksgiving week, we stopped off in Madison and visited with the Mosses. On my desk the next Monday we found an envelope, addressed to us both.

"What is it?" I asked while hanging our coats on the rack.

"A dinner invitation," Donna answered, "from Toby and Andrea. Tonight at the Palms."

"Toby and Andrea?"

"Yeah."

"In public?"

"They go to temple together . . ."

"Temple doesn't count as public, Donna."

"What does it count as?"

"Temple," I replied.

"What do you suppose this means?"

"What do you suppose this means?"

She thought a minute. "Do you think they're coming out?"

"Donna," I chortled, "it's not like they've been in the closet."

"Or do you think," she ignored my perfectly reasonable response, "they're planning to out Sam and Mallory?"

"I think Sam and Mallory pretty well outed themselves at our wedding reception, don't you?"

"Oh," she said pensively. "What do you suppose this means?"

We had to wait until the evening to find out. Andrea had been detained in a meeting on the Hill and Toby, being Toby, refused to answer any questions until she arrived. When she arrived, all our questions were answered: she wore a ring, third finger, left hand. CJ, Donna and Mallory didn't even let Andy sit down before forming the girly-squeal huddle right there in the middle of the restaurant. We men were a bit more dignified, offering civil handshakes to the Director of Communications. Just about the time Toby snatched Andrea away from the gaggle and into his embrace we saw a flash reflect off the picture glass. Rather than grouse, Toby and Andrea smiled and the flash popped again.

"When is the wedding?" Mallory and Donna chorused.

"What wedding?" Andrea asked coyly.

The younger ladies were non-plussed. "Your wedding!" Mallory exclaimed loudly enough that Sam clamped his hand over her mouth and looked around nervously before uncovering her face.

"Andy?" Donna prompted.

Andy's glance gave the question to Toby. "There isn't going to be a wedding."

"Excuse me?" Sam's brow furrowed.

"There isn't going to be a wedding because there's already been a wedding," Toby stroked his furrowed brow.

I looked at the rest of our little party for illumination, but was struck by the fear that my face bore the same dumbstruck look.

"You're going to live in sin?" Sam asked.

"Sam," Mallory chided.

"Nobody uses that expression anymore, Sam," CJ corrected.

"They did when they thought Donna and I were doing it," I defended.

"We're surrounded by idiots." Toby's exasperation escalated before he sputtered, "We're having the divorce set aside."

"We're trying," Andrea corrected. "It seems to be a lot more complicated than getting divorced to start with."

"Sounds like a government operation," a voice said from behind CJ.

"Will Sawyer," she greeted cautiously.

Immediately the table fell silent in response to a blip on our reporter radar.

"Relax, guys," Sawyer placated. "I'm off-duty."

"Right," CJ crooked an eyebrow. "Like you'd pass up a good story."

"Story?" the reporter picked a chip from CJ's plate. "Oh, like the un-divorce of the White House Director of Communications and a member of Congress?"

We remained stone-faced while CJ did her job. "Something like that."

He leaned closer to the Press Secretary. "Stories are for novelists; I report the news."

Their eyes locked for an instant until Toby coughed. "Some of your colleagues," CJ sputtered, "don't climb to the high moral ground you occupy."

He filched another chip and Mallory elbowed Sam. "Oh, you mean the photographer out there?"

"Yes, him," CJ replied over his chip-crunching.

He reached for another chip but captured CJ's hand as she tried to swat his. "He wouldn't know real news if it bit him in the . . ." CJ tilted her head and he colored slightly. "Sorry, ladies." He spoke to the table but his eyes never left CJ even as he stood. "Kiss me goodbye?"

"Until tomorrow?" CJ scoffed.

"Until I don't know," Will replied. "I'm leaving for Afghanistan tomorrow." Then, to our shock-and especially hers-he leaned forward and kissed her soundly. "See you around, Claudia Jean."

We resumed our prior conversation but she stared at the door through which he'd exited, confusion, anger and fear clouding her face before she murmured, "See you around."


	6. Noel

Noel

  
  


For the first forty years of my life Christmas held little significance for me. But then, Rosslyn happened and nothing was the same. Donna, on the other hand, is the original Ghost of Christmas Present: from Thanksgiving until New Year, she is so festive that Scrooge would have driven a stake of holly through her heart just to get some relief. I understand the feeling.

Until Christmas 2000 when she had spent the holidays, well, Danny Concannon's unauthorized biography of us describes, in exhaustive detail, how she spent the holidays. Suffice it to say she spent Christmas Eve 2000 in the Emergency Room with a sick friend and that sick friend was determined Christmas Eve 2001 would be decidedly more festive or at least as festive as the war would allow. This year we'd stay home, basking in the glow (or was it glare?) of the thousands of lights Donna had wrapped around the artificial tree I had forced on her when she realized that we wouldn't be at home enough to keep a real tree watered. So, at noon, I stood in my office planning how I would pick up a couple of steak dinners from Ruth's Chris and a bottle of wine on the way home. I knew for fact that Donna had the Alistair Sim version of "Scrooge" already cued up in the DVD player. 

The President, as was his custom, had taken "personal staff time" in the Residence, including Charlie and his sister. CJ had gone home to California the Friday before. Toby was just finishing up the noon briefing before going home to Andy's place. Leo had already sent Margaret home, much to Donna's consternation, but remained in his office, waiting for Mallory, who was at Donna's desk, trying to wheedle information about her Christmas present from Sam. Sam had gone out to pick up said Christmas present. All was as it should have been this Christmas 2001. 

At 12:36 pm, while I was harassing Mallory for harassing my wife, a loud blast rattled the windows on the north side of the Executive Mansion. Within seconds we could see smoke rising from what looked to be only two blocks away. In the next instant, in what had become entirely too commonplace an occurrence, additional agents flooded the rooms. "Lurch," my friend from September 11, became my shadow again. 

The monitors in the bullpen were still looping reports of the futile cave searches so we crowded around the windows, watching the smoke rise into the gray buttermilk sky. Brown at first, the plume darkened and widened with each passing moment. I felt Donna clutching my elbow and, automatically, handed her the handkerchief I'd begun keeping in my pocket for her while I slid my arm around her waist, defying our "hands-off in the office" agreement with Leo.

"Hey, Lurch," I called over my shoulder and the agent took a step or two into the office. "What do you know?"

Lurch, apparently I wasn't the first to call him that, pressed a finger to his earpiece before replying, "Apparent car bomb, Mr. Lyman. Near Farragut Square."

"Sam," Donna gasped and I spun to dial, "isn't the jeweler on Dupont Circle?"

Before I could call, my phone rang and I jerked it up, expecting to hear former Indiana governor Jack Buckland, who'd been named Homeland Security Director after the anthrax letters began. Instead, I heard the Officer of the Day.

"Mr. Lyman, I have the DC police on the line about Mr. Seaborn."

I must have blanched at what the officer asked. Donna blanched as she heard me describing our friend.

"Where's Mallory?" I demanded, grabbing both of our coats from the rack.

"She went down to Leo's when the crash began." I held out her coat and she donned it. "Josh?"

"Sam's hurt." I had never walked the familiar path to Leo's so quickly.

"How?"

I slowed slightly to prevent her from falling off those damned heels she still insisted on wearing despite the Little Dude and jerked my head in the direction of the smoke plume. Donna gasped. With only a perfunctory knock I opened Leo's door. "Sam's hurt."

Mallory's face grew round in bewilderment and she stood, motionless, as though stunned. Donna recognized the look and threw Mallory's coat over her shoulders and tugged her into the hall while Leo grabbed his.

"You can't leave the building, Mr. Lyman." Lurch blocked the door. "The White House is locked down because a bomb exploded two blocks . . ."

I cut off the rest of the words with a fiery glare but my voice was icy. "Get out of my way."

Lurch stonewalled for nearly a minute before raising his arm and mumbling into his sleeve. It took nearly another minute for the response. "Either you or Mr. McGarry will have to remain. You both can't be unsecured."

I shot a glance back at Leo, who looked at me, then at his distraught daughter. Squeezing her hand he ordered, "Go; Sam needs you."

It's odd how some events in your life go in and out of focus. I remember the first sight of that smoke plume, and the call from the DC police, with perfect clarity. But, to this day, I remember little of the ride to George Washington University Hospital except goading Mallory into the back of a Secret Service SUV between Donna and me. I don't really remember going into the hospital. But everything snapped into sharp focus when, as they wheeled him through the hall to surgery, I saw Sam.

He was covered with a sheet from toe to bare chest, arms veritable pincushions attached to dripping bags of clear fluids. His head was strapped between two foam blocks-thick padding swathing his left eye and the rest of his face swollen and already turning black. In short, if I hadn't known him I wouldn't have known him. We chased until he reached the Surgical Wing doors, Mallory crying out his name. Memories of a similar trip flooded my mind but I waded against them to do one of the few things I remembered from before my own surgery. "Sam, we're here."

The doors swung shut and we stood, motionless, until I noticed Lurch haranguing a nurse. After a moment he returned to us. "I've secured a private waiting room down the hall, Mr. Lyman." He herded us a few feet. "Here." He ushered us into the room, but remained in the corridor, our own private sentinel. I lingered at the door, watching Donna guide Mallory to the hard couch. "Get me a cop who can tell me what happened and," I growled to the agent, "get me a doctor who can tell me what's going on."

The doctor, actually the hospital spokesperson, arrived even before Lurch talked into his sleeve. He explained it all in great technical detail, using many words I-we-barely understood. Mallory nodded numbly, while Donna closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

"How long," Mallory asked absently, "before he's recovered? Completely?"

The spokesman sighed indulgently. "I'm not sure you understand, ma'am. Shrapnel from the bomb burst the left eye itself and obliterated the inner ear. The loss of both is permanent."

Now we understood.

As my mind calculated the shrapnel's trajectory (a word I had only a passing familiarity with before the summer of 2000), an awful question asked itself, "What about brain damage?"

The spokesperson hesitated slightly, but it was enough to force a gasp from Mallory. "We'll know more if he wakes up." He clasped his hands in front and rocked from his heels to his toes. "His surgery could take five or six hours; it could be several hours after that before he comes around."

Dismissed by my nod and mumbled thanks, the police liaison passed the hospital spokesperson in the doorway. Her self-introduction barely registered as I stood. "I'm Josh Lyman, Deputy White House Chief of Staff and White House Deputy to the Director of Homeland Security."

Her scowl prompted me to continue. "Which means your report is not just personal to me but official."

She swallowed before beginning, "At 12:36 p.m. a car bomb exploded in front of 1120 Connecticut Avenue, Northwest. Although our investigation is just beginning, residue indicates it to have been of the ammonium-nitrate/diesel fuel variety."

"How big?"

"It's hard to say; one-twentieth of Oklahoma City?" she guessed before continuing. "The building contains-contained--the Legislative Offices of Planned Parenthood."

"Casualties?"

"Two killed inside, ten deaths on the street." She studied her notes a moment. "Mr. Seaborn was the only survivor from inside the kill zone."

A whimper rose behind me.

"Th-The bomb experts," even the officer wasn't made of stone, "think it was his SUV that saved him-protected him from most of the shrapnel, absorbed a lot of the energy from the blast." She glanced at Mallory. "How is he?"

"Still in surgery; we'll know more later," I supplied. "Any idea who's responsible?'

She nodded. "A phone call was received at a local TV station at 12:42 p.m. from someone claiming to represent the Children's Army. Apparently, they've escalated from bombing empty abortion clinics."

"Apparently," I jammed my left hand in my pants pocket and chafed the back of my neck with the other hand. "Suspects?"

"We're still investigating. I can notify you if anything develops . . ." The officer's eyebrows raised.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Thank you, Captain." After a brief handshake, she was gone and we were alone.

Mallory sat stiffly, Donna's hand wrapped around hers, seemingly focused on the row of chairs opposite hers.

I crouched in front of her, dipping my head to meet her gaze. "Can I do something for you?"

Her eyes met mine but they were wild, angry, "Can you make Sam well?" her voice sliced through me.

Rocked for a moment, I studied my hand--the scar from last Christmas now a white cord on my palm. "No," I confessed, then met her gaze again, "but I can help him get well-like he did for me."

Tears welled in her eyes and mine, too. Donna pulled Mallory's head onto her shoulder and grabbed my hand. From the corner of my eye I could see Lurch moving discreetly to block the door.

"I don't understand," Mallory's voice hitched, "what he was doing on Connecticut."

Donna and I shared a guilty look but maintained our silence.

"Mr. Lyman?" Lurch asked from the door. "There's a nurse who needs to see you."

"Yeah," I replied huskily, stepping into the hall.

"It's about Mr. Seaborn's personal effects," the older black woman began. "When I was bagging his topcoat, this fell out of the pocket. I didn't think you'd want it to get lost."

"It" was a black velvet box which I slipped into my jacket pocket. I already knew what was inside; I'd been with him when he'd ordered it. "Thank you," I whispered hoarsely. Patting my hand gently, she padded quietly down the hall. I swallowed hard, noticing only then Lurch's questioning look. "He was planning on proposing tonight," I almost choked on the words. "Now . . ."

"He'll still have the chance," Lurch said quietly. "Anyone who's made it through a campaign, an assassination attempt and three years in the White House doesn't give up easily, Mr. Lyman."

I looked up, and up, at the agent. He was thin, face seemingly chiseled from granite, but beneath the stony glare was a gentle strength. "No, we don't, Agent . . ."

"Vladimir Lurcael," he supplied.

"You're kidding. And people call you . . ."

"Lurch, sir."

"Thank you, Agent Lurcael."

"You're welcome, sir." He cocked his head. "The White House has stood down," he relayed. "Mr. McGarry and Mr. Ziegler are on their way over."

I nodded and scuffed to the seat on the other side of Mallory, where I remained, except when I was pacing, through phone calls to Sam's parents (separately), Leo and Toby's arrival, a phone call from CJ, a phone call from the President, a visit from the hospital liaison saying the surgery was progressing as well as could be expected, another phone call from CJ until the until the scrub-clad doctor informed us that Sam was in the Recovery Room. It was nearly seven o'clock. We waited another hour, then moved our camp to an Intensive Care waiting room, our privacy again insured by Lurch. Every thirty minutes a pair of us would be allowed into his room. We'd talk to him, still unconscious, until they ushered us out again. Remembering my own experience, I made sure that Mallory went every time: hers should be the first face he saw. The rest of us rotated: me then Donna then Toby; Leo had returned to the White House when he'd been moved to ICU. On my second visit we stood on either side of the bed, Mallory holding his right hand where he could see her, I his left. She chattered nervously about something that had happened in her class, until she stopped abruptly.

"Did you feel that?" she whispered.

I nodded. "Sam?" I chafed his hand and she copied. "It's okay to wake up now, Sam." He moaned softly then slid a dry tongue across parched lips before the unbandaged eye fluttered open.

"Hi," she whispered and he croaked a dry reply.

Confusion and fear clouded his vision. "What-where?"

"You're at George Washington Hospital," I explained. 

"You're gonna be fine," Mallory said too quickly.

Sam tried to turn his head to see me but flinched and groaned from the tiniest motion.

Mallory slid her palm alongside his bare cheek. "Be still, Sam," she whispered desperately, tears teetering in her already red-rimmed eyes. "Just be still."

"Hurts," he sighed, eyes closing and blanching.

With my free hand I lay a pushbutton control on his chest. "Press the button for more pain medication."

I released his hand and he took the control, thumbing the button. Mallory smiled reassuringly and he relaxed after a few minutes.

"Good stuff, huh?" I grinned and he hummed agreement. "Enjoy it while you can."

"Yeah," he replied heavily before his breathing deepened and became regular.

With a nod to the door I ushered Mallory back to our private waiting room where she sat numbly on the hard couch. A pillow appeared in the hands of Agent Lurcael which I stuffed under her head and pushed her down gently. "Sam would want you to rest, Mallory."

At first she resisted but, noticing that Donna was already asleep on the other couch, she finally relented. His parents arrived around midnight-Leo had arranged their transportation and Donna and I alternated with them waking and accompanying Mallory on the semi-hourly visits until my turn came around four a.m.-very, very a.m. Reaching to shake her awake I saw the weariness on her face, the panic, and could not-would not-disturb her.

Quickly, I smoothed my hand over my shirt, straightened the loosened tie, raked fingers through the unruly curls while stepping down the hall, pausing just inside Sam's door. It was dark and quiet and, for a moment, memories threatened to overwhelm me-the heart monitor beeping in time to the pounding of my heart, the antiseptic odor souring a stomach filled with too little food and too much caffeine-so that, for a moment I was back in that hard bed, staring at the clock on the wall, fitful sleep forever interrupted by CICU nurses. The memory closed around me, the pounding in my ears so loud I almost didn't hear the ragged whisper, "Someone there?"

"It's me, Sam," I stepped around to the far side of the bed, shaking my head as the memories slithered back to that nook of my mind where they lurked, waiting for occasions such as this to reappear. His eyes-eye-strayed to the clock on the wall at the foot of the bed.

"Which four is it?" His voice was weak, scratchy.

"A.m." I said quietly.

"You should get some rest."

"I'm fine." I wrapped my fingers around the bed rail. After a long silence he timidly brushed the back of his hand against my fingers. I folded the hand around his and worried with the IV line with the other hand.

His eye drifted shut and I thought he may have fallen asleep again before he spoke, "I don't remember anything." His eye flew open and found mine, whatever white that wasn't bloodshot contrasting against the deepening bruise on the unbandaged side of his face. "Nobody will tell me."

"That may not be such a bad thing, Sam." I shifted my feet and leaned against the rail. "Give yourself time to heal a little before you have to deal with that."

"Would that have helped you?"

I dropped my head in defeat, looking up at him through my eyebrows. "Probably not." His face was pale, what little wasn't darkening from bruises, so that the white gauze that covered his left eye almost blended in. The left side was swollen, a neat row of fine stitches just inside the hairline revealed how they'd peeled his face away from his skull to repair damage to the eye socket. Another gauze pad was taped behind his left ear where the hair had been shaved from an area the size of a coffee cup. It was no wonder Mallory could barely look at him and that his warring parents had sobbed in each other's arms for half an hour after the first sight of him.

"It's not my place, Sam," I croaked. "It should be Mallory or your parents or . . ."

"Please," he rasped. "You'll tell me the truth. They won't."

With a sigh I brushed my thumb across the tear that was coursing down his cheek. "What's the last thing you remember?"

He closed his eye for a moment then replied, "Wake-up call to CJ after Senior Staff. She was pretty pissed."

I smiled at the memory, "Yeah, well, it was six in the morning in California, Sam."

A smile skittered across his face. "And then I talked to somebody over at OMB." He ran his tongue across his lips. "Ira . . . Ira . . ."

"Epstein."

"Yeah, Ira Epstein," he swallowed hard. "I talked to Epstein before I went to . . ." His eye flitted about, unfocused before returning to me, fear clouding his expression, "Mallory's ring. I went to pick it up from the jeweler's in Farragut Square and I put it in my pocket and . . ."

"I have it; I have the ring."

Relief seemed to wash over him for a moment until the confusion returned. "And?"

"Do you remember driving back down Connecticut?"

"No."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

He wasn't ready for this. We both knew it. But, how can anyone be ready for something like this? "There was a bomb: the legislative offices of Planned Parenthood."

"I don't remember."

"It destroyed the building and killed everyone within a fifty-yard radius. Except you, Sam."

He blinked rapidly. "I don't remember," he soughed. "How bad is it?"

How much should I say? Should I lie?

"Josh?" he begged, voice like a fearful child's.

Please let this be the right thing. "Your were close enough to the bomb that your car was blasted with debris and shrapnel. The police said they were surprised you were even alive."

"Josh . . ."

I took a deep breath, praying to the God I'd only recently rediscovered. "They think the car protected you from the concussion wave and most of the blast debris but one piece hit you in the eye. It," I had to lick my parched lips, "It ruptured the eye itself before destroying the middle and inner ear and exiting just behind the left ear."

Sam's face remained frozen in a teary expression of shock and fear that had registered at the first mention of his eye. His breathing shallowed and quickened and I lay my hand in the middle of his chest. "Sam . . ."

His lips were moving and I leaned down to catch the sound.

"How bad?" His gaze locked onto mine, searching for any shred of untruth.

My face was only a few inches from his. "Total loss of vision in the left eye, total loss of hearing on the left side."

He drew a ragged breath, then his hands flew to his face so quickly I almost didn't grasp them in time. "You're lying," he hissed.

"It's the truth, Sam," he struggled but was so weak my chest didn't even twinge from the effort.

"I want to see it," his struggle lessened in force but not in fury.

"Sam . . ."

"I have to see it," he begged, surrendering to my grip.

"I know." The nurse I summoned seemed hesitant at first, but finally assented to assist. When I'd been shot, I'd waited until the first time I was alone-it had seemed like forever-before I pulled down the gown and peeled off the gauze padding. The sight of my own blood crusted along the incision that was held together by metal staples was at once horrifying and perversely comforting. The knowledge that I had been, for all intents and purposes, dead but had lived seemed to awaken a determination to survive. Once I saw the truth, I knew how to fight. I hoped-I prayed-it would be the same for Sam.

The nurse returned with his doctor in tow. Actually, it was the opthamologist who was only one of several "-ologists" tending him. He was surprisingly gentle, pulling away the tape then the thick pad. I moved to the head of the bed and leaned my head next to my friend's so I could see what he saw. He nodded and the nurse held up a mirror.

It seemed like forever before he breathed and then it was a desperate gasp as he turned away from his own reflection.

The doctor's voice was consoling. "The swelling will subside in a few days, Mr. Seaborn-the bruises may take a couple of weeks. In about six weeks, when the facial fractures have healed, we'll fit your temporary prosthesis." The doctor paused before continuing. "All-in-all, Mr. Seaborn, you're very lucky to have . . ."

"Thank you, Doctor," I cut him off and, out of Sam's line of sight, waved a dismissal at him. I took the mirror from the nurse and dismissed her, too. "Look, Sam."

He swallowed hard and waited 

"It's just what you look like, Sam; it's not who you are."

The back of his hand brushed against my arm. "What if that's changed, too?" He matched my gaze.

I could feel the hot tears streaming down my face and smiled sheepishly before focusing on our reflection. "What hasn't changed is that there are people who love you and accept you. End of story."

Reluctantly, he extended his hand, fingers tracing the changes in his reflection on the surface of the mirror. "I hope so," he sighed.

I met his stare in the mirror. "I know so," I promised huskily. "They did the same for me."

A hint of an expression of hope skittered across his battered face before sleep overtook him again.


	7. The Last Eunuch

The Last Eunuch

  
  


The first half of 2002 was mostly a blur. Between my duties at Leo's Deputy, campaigning and my travels on behalf of the Office of Homeland Security, it seemed like my firstborn son would have, upon birth, more frequent flyer mileage than most CEOs. First born son? Yeah. After spending Christmas, the New Year and Epiphany in the hospital with Sam, we really didn't have the energy to keep up the subterfuge. Mother Nature took care of the announcement when, seemingly overnight on a trip to Iowa for the caucuses, Donna "blossomed." Her eyes grew round as buttons, hooks and zippers that had closed easily only a few days before suddenly refused to even meet.

"What can I do?" she gasped. "Senior Staff's in five minutes and stores won't open for another four hours!"

We stared dumbly at each other for several minutes before exclaiming, as if we had one mind, "CJ!"

I had no sooner finished a brief explanation of the situation than came a knock at the door; I could have sworn I could almost feel the heat of her anger through the heavy wood. I should have known better.

She tossed a token, "Idiot," in my direction before dragging my wife down the hall and disappearing into the Presidential Suite. Tie askew, I gathered my notebooks and followed, settling uncomfortably on the sofa for Senior Staff. With one ear to the meeting and one eye on the bedroom door, I endured Toby's smirks, Sam's long-distance-speakerphone witticisms (he hadn't returned to work) and Leo and Bruno's glares until, like Fairy Godmothers, CJ and the First Lady ushered my wife into the room.

She was breathtaking.

She wore a pair of Lily Mays' sensibly fashionable shoes, and CJ's gray flannel skirt covered by my last white dress shirt, worn untucked-apparently "clothing elf" had suddenly been included in the duties of the protective detail. Her hair was pulled back off of her face and a scarf I recognized as the First Lady's draped her neck.

My eyes met hers and she blushed, her left hand-ring gleaming-resting tentatively on the cause of all the couture chaos.

"I'm fat," she protested.

"You're beautiful," I murmured and her color deepened.

"I'm scared," she confessed.

I stepped in front of her and covered her hand with mine. "I'm not." I folded her into my embrace, both of our tears dotting the shoulder of my purloined shirt. After a moment we released each other, glancing sheepishly at our cohorts. "We're pregnant."

"We're screwed," Gianelli moaned.

"Well, we're excited," the President corrected. "Aren't we, friends?"

"Overjoyed," Toby feigned indifference but a grin lifted the corners of his beard.

"Tickled pink," CJ agreed, again failing to display true consternation, "or blue-as the case may be."

"You're all insane," Bruno's tirade withered under Leo's glare.

"He's just mad because you figured out a way to have a life despite his best efforts," Leo grinned. "Congratulations to you both."

And that was that. The meeting concluded; we were back to business as usual. Well, almost usual-there was nothing usual about the wistful, covetous looks CJ would direct at Donna. Only then did I understand that she, too, had paid a terrible price for her service.

Aboard Air Force One after our slim victory in the Iowa Caucuses, I accidentally overheard a telephone conversation CJ held while sitting on the metal staircase between cabins.

"Is your offer still open?" she said fearfully, phone jammed against her ear while scraping a fingernail against a tread. Here, in the corridor, the engine roar was the only sound for several minutes. "Then my answer is yes." I could hear the smile in her voice and hoped I correctly guessed the questioner and the question. She didn't return to the White House after we landed that evening. With a shy wave to us, she hopped into a waiting car. The last of our little coterie of emotional eunuchs had ventured outside the palace walls. It was about time.


	8. Memories of a Future Past

Memories of a Future Past

  
  


"I look like a character from an Austin Powers movie."

Since Christmas Sam had developed the habit of turning the injured side of his face slightly away from whomever he was talking with. It kind of hurt that he did it with me, too, but then, I hadn't gone out of my way to let him see my scar. I guess I understood.

"The young guy or the old one?" Maybe I could lighten up the mood.

"The blind one," he glared silently from the makeup chair. After recuperating for a month, Sam had returned to work after Iowa and right before New Hampshire and now, at CJ's insistence, he was appearing on "Capitol Beat" as Bartlet's point man on gun control. The makeup artist grasped his chin in a vain effort to still him while dabbing pancake along his hairline. He winced and the artist-- whose widening eyes signaled she was just now noticing the fine crimson scar that began high on the left temple, curved around behind the left ear then outlined the jaw halfway to his chin-paused, almost imperceptibly, but long enough for him to notice and bolt from the chair. "I can't do this," he hissed, turning the right side of his face toward me.

I moved my head so I was looking at his "bad" side. "You can."

"I'm a freak."

"Hey," the corners of my mouth turned up but it wasn't a smile, "you're talking to a guy with railroad tracks down the center of his chest."

His gaze met mine. "I can do this?" he whispered, finally.

"Piece of cake," I grinned and pushed him back into the chair and the artist resumed.

"I don't look like a cartoon character?"

"Nah, you look ruthless."

He fell silent, controlling his breathing, and I knew he was trying to ward off the diamond-splinter headaches that now punctuated his days. The artist replaced the eyepatch he'd be wearing until his prosthesis was finished, brushed him off and ushered him out to the green room. "Think I can take them?"

"With one eye tied behind your back."

He wheeled so quickly I almost ran into him. The first emotion that crossed his face was shock that was quickly burned away by rage that only a few of us knew he could muster. He balled his fists but I stood firm and that rage chilled to fear. I met his gaze with a broad smile and his expression warmed. "And some would say you're heartless."

I cocked an eyebrow. "So that's the reason I survived Rosslyn."

He stared at the set while a technician wired him up. "You think I can take these guys?" he swallowed hard, "half-blind and half-deaf?"

"Sam, you could take these guys half-witted." 

He chuckled and slid into his seat while I slid behind the cameraman. When his time came he was the old Sam--passionate, persistent and erudite. I stood, in the background, grinning like, well, like Leo. In an instant I flashed on a future, not-too-distant, getting up from my desk, walking into that round, yellow room and saying, "Good morning, Mr. President."

The face, a weathered version of the one before me now, would look up and crack wise, "You know you don't have to call me that."

I'd lay a blue folder on the desk and reply, "I know, sir. I just like the sound of it."

The red camera light dimmed, as did my daydream, and the same technician unwired Sam before he carefully-depth perception is tricky with only one eye-stepped down off the set. "What?" he asked suspiciously.

"Nothin'," I grinned smugly, imagining for a moment the future campaign of Bartlet for America: The Next Generation-Sam Seaborn as the President and Josh Lyman as the Chief of Staff.

He strode down the hall, "'Cause you look like you figured out a way to eliminate the Republican party."

"Something like that," I slid beside him in the SUV and pulled into the traffic. "Something like that."


	9. A Member of the Wedding

  
  
A Member of the Wedding   
  


"The church is packed," I marveled, peering from the Acolytes' Changing Room of St. Patrick's church.

"It's become a circus," Sam complained, adjusting his tie with quaking hands. "Between Leo's political cronies, Jenny's society doyennes, my dad's business associates, my mom's charity sisters, Mallory's students and the White House list, I thought we were gonna need to rent out Redskins Stadium. You got off lucky." He held out his hands helplessly.

"It didn't feel like it at the time," I stepped over and fumbled with the cravat. "Even our small White House wedding had its own peculiar charms: having to vet every single guest, trimming the guest list to bare essentials, finding a rabbi who didn't mind the setting and the goy bride, ordering the ketubah with special wording, listening to her family kvetch when we told them we'd be raising our kids Jewish. But our little nuptials were nothing compared with the O'Brien-Seaborn Follies of 2002."

"It's garish, isn't it?" he wriggled like a six-year-old, eyes not quite tracking together as his gaze flitted about the room. "The wedding. It's taken on a life its own."

"When Donna and I married, the memories of September 11 were just too fresh. But it's April 2, Sam, and we've been through Congressional censure, most of the primaries, the anthrax letters, the countless months of fruitless cave searches, and now the Passover attacks; we need a break." 

I finished with the tie and he peeked out the door. "Is that what your phone call from State was about earlier? More Passover violence?"

"No," I answered, dragging my hand down my face. "Just something for Leo."

"Is he really taking the day off?" Sam continued surveying the church.

"By Executive Order," I grinned. "As are you."

Music swelled from the chapel. "I guess that means it's time," he whispered, turning and leaning back against the closed door. "Is it? Is it really time for me?"

"Do you love her?"

He swallowed hard. "In what way? The Greeks had many words for love-one for each of the facets of it. How do I know that what I'm feeling isn't the marrying kind, but some other, temporary or even permanent kind of affection or possibly friendship that . . ."

"Sam," I interrupted and he stared, fish-eyed, "when you were waking up in the hospital, before you opened your eyes, whose face did you want to see?"

His face brightened after a long moment. "Mallory." 

"Then I guess it's time," I replied, following him to our places at the altar. I don't remember much about what followed, actually (thank goodness for videotape), except for the vision of my beautiful, radiant, pregnant, now-voluptuous Donna following the nearly-as-beautiful CJ down the aisle to a little gilt chair that Sam had insisted on. I remember Leo's sad smile when he gave Mallory to Sam and the look of pride mixed with awe as Sam took her arm. I don't really remember much after that until the reception when it came my turn to toast the newlyweds.

I stood, timidly, feeling surprisingly awkward amidst the grandeur of The Willard Hotel's ballroom. "Toby wrote an exquisite toast for the occasion and the smart thing for me to do would be to read it but . . ." The crowd laughed. "As I was leaving this morning I passed by, as I do every morning, my-Donna's and my-marriage covenant. For some reason, as I do many mornings, I paused to read it-I guess to make sure I'm living up to my end of the contract," I glanced nervously at Donna, who smiled back. "So anyway, I was reading the covenant and realized. . ."

"In this lifetime, Josh," Toby exhorted.

". . . And realized it said . . ."

"Today, Josh," CJ encouraged.

"I realized it said everything I wish-Donna and I wish--for our friends." I took a deep breath and smiled at Donna before continuing. "Sam and Mallory, may you desire for your lives to be intertwined forever and for your love to be eternal. May you treasure, respect and honor each other. May you support each other in achieving intellectual, emotional and spiritual fulfillment. May you promise to be full and equal partners in life and to do everything within your power to permit each of you to become the persons you are yet to be. May you create a home that is rich with wisdom and caring, built on your faith and acts of lovingkindness, a home filled with love, learning and generosity. May you celebrate the flow of the seasons and the passages of life with joy and reverence. May your lives together be illuminated by your people's heritages. May you enter into this covenant with love, companionship, peace and friendship. Sam, Mallory," I raised my glass, "from this day forward may you be as one."(1)

They left shortly after that. I latched onto my wife's hand and then sought out the also-engaged CJ who was chatting with Jenny O'Brien about the horrors of finding adequate caterers in the hinterlands of the Napa Valley.

"Ride back to the White House with us, CJ?"

"No, Joshua," she whined then bit a maraschino cherry from its stem.

"Everyone's entitled to a day off, Josh," Jenny O'Brien said caustically.

"Yes, they are, Jenny," I agreed, "just not today."

"Something's come up," CJ followed us to the limousine. "What?" she asked when we'd pulled off.

"Not until we get back," I warned and Donna squeezed my hand.

CJ settled back for the remainder of the ride, then followed us directly to the Oval Office.

"What is it?" she asked after Toby had closed the door. "Is it Palestine?" The President sat in his occasional chair and motioned her to the couch. Donna sat next to her and Toby across from her. The First Lady sat on the opposite couch next to the President. "What?" she asked suspiciously. Leo and I stood behind the President. "You're scaring me, guys."

The President leaned forward and took her hand. "The bodies of three American journalists were found this morning outside Kabul." CJ tried to pull back but the President held on. "They've been identified as Jake Wester of AP, Kantinlinyiere Williams of Scripps and Will Sawyer. They had been murdered."

She blinked erratically, then licked her lips. "No," she rasped. "He was getting on a plane today. He was coming home for a whole month before the wedding."

"He never made the flight, CJ," Leo said gently.

"No," she disagreed. "I talked to him last night. He was driving twenty kilometers to the airport, getting on a plane and coming home to me."

Toby studied his hands. "They were ambushed about five kilometers from the airport."

She shook her head. "I talked to him last night and he was coming home." She covered her mouth. "He promised me he was coming home," her voice quavered and the First Lady, with a pointed glance, dismissed the men. After thirty minutes or so, Donna and the First Lady walked CJ to her office. From the doorway, I could see the red rimming her eyes.

"You okay?" I set a sweating can of ginger ale on her desk when we were alone.

She snorted and closed her eyes drawing long, rough breaths. Her eyes met mine. "How did he die?"

I couldn't do this. I couldn't tell her. I had to tell her. "They were," I stumbled over the word, "stabbed to death."

"Stabbed," she said carefully, "or hacked?"

I couldn't answer.

"Oh, God," she murmured, burying her face in her hands. "When will he," she scrubbed her hands across her eyes, "his body be home?"

"They'll get into Edwards at midnight tonight."

"Midnight," she blanched a sickly, familiar shade of green and I opened the drink and set it in her shaking hands. After several careful sips she turned her eyes to me. "How did you know?"

"About the baby?"

She nodded.

"I am extremely familiar," I smiled, "with that particular shade of green." 

She sipped a bit more. "We were a tad, um, careless after he surprised me on Valentine's."

"Happens to the best of us," I shrugged. "Did Will know?"

She smiled shyly, "Yes."

I just nodded.

"I should know what to do next . . ."

"Do you want me to call his parents?"

"I should call his sister," she shook her head, "Then them." She took a few more sips. "How do we get his body from here to . . ."

"It's taken care of. Just tell me where."

"Thank you," she said quietly. "I don't know if I can do this alone, Joshua." Tears rolled down her face. "Any of it."

I joined her behind her desk, leaning against it. "You won't have to, Claudia Jean," I folded my arms around her. "You won't have to."

1. From "Custom Ketubah" by Miriam Karp, http://www.customketubah.com/texts.htm found March 30, 2002. 


	10. The Mile High Club

The Mile-High Club

  
  


My children began, as most do, as the spark of love and life that resulted from a twinkle in their father's eye and the shy smile on their mother's face. They seemed to arrive in this world, however, with a bit more hoopla. They are, after all, my children. 

My first inkling that the arrival of my firstborn was imminent was this very strange look on his mother's face as she quietly closed the bathroom door behind her. This odd look preceded the three words that instil panic into the heart of the bravest--myself included.

"My water broke."

Being the erudite, alpha-male I responded in the requisite manner, "Are you sure?" followed by a gulp.

Her caustic response did little to calm me. "Yes."

Normally, this little exchange would be followed by the gathering of suitcases and focus items and a journey to the hospital where the delivery would occur.

Normally.

"You're not due until June first," I reasoned.

"Six weeks from now."

Most normal people don't travel to Russia at the behest of their country reasoning that it would be okay since they had six weeks until arrival of aforementioned firstborn.

"Josh?" Donna's voice quivered. "I can't do this, we can't do this here."

"Here" was Air Force One.

"Are you sure this is it?" I tried to confirm before panic set in.

She nodded, then gasped, grabbing her belly and sliding down the nearest wall. In a flurry of folders I tried to catch her, or at least slow her descent. In the process my hand brushed her stomach and felt, from the outside, what she must be feeling from the inside--a tightening

vise of steely muscles. Terror filled her eyes as they met mine and I said the only thing I could remember from the one childbirth class we'd attended before we left.

"Breathe through it, Donna."

She snarled and I repeated the instruction, calmly (or so I hoped it seemed) rubbing her belly while her panting nearly drowned out the jet engine roar.

It would probably do to mention at this point that the crew of Air Force One is top-notch. They're so good you don't even notice they're there until they're bringing you something you hadn't realized until just then that you needed. Thank God. The steward appeared with the doctor just as I was about to scream for one. The pain subsided and we settled Donna on the couch where the doctor proceeded to reassure Donna that first babies take forever and this was probably just a false alarm.

It would also do to mention at this point the doctor was a Navy surgeon, a trauma specialist who'd boned up on MS since he'd be traveling with the President--who'd not delivered a baby since the Reagan administration. Yeah, I looked him up. So, when the next contraction began a scant five minutes later, too soon even by my crappy watch, I did what a smart man in my position would do: I sent for the First Lady.

Both Donna and the Doctor seemed relieved.

As a doctor, I loved Abigail Bartlet. When I was hurt, I looked forward to her visits--she'd tell me the hard truths in that no-nonsense voice of hers and temper it with that mother's smile that told me she knew I could get through whatever life had thrown my way. Donna was well into another contraction by the time she arrived, calm and collected. My family could not be in the hands of a better doctor.

Only, she wasn't a doctor anymore. She'd voluntarily surrendered her license on her last birthday rather than wait for Board sanctions regarding her treatment of the President. She could not practice medicine. Damn.

"Well," she kneeled in front of us, "what seems to be the problem?" 

Her face was so blank that Donna's eyes widened with fear before Mrs. B. giggled. Donna giggled, too. "Oh, you know," Donna said jokingly, "the usual."

The First Lady smiled reassuringly and lay her hand on Donna's belly, squeezing and poking a bit. "How long have you been in labor?"

"Fifteen or twenty minutes," Donna answered. "Since my water broke."

Dr. Bartlet-Mrs. Bartlet-continued to prod. "Did you feel anything before that: restlessness, pain in your lower back?"

Donna nodded but I answered. "She's had a terrible backache since last night."

"Well, now," the doctors exchanged glances that could only mean trouble, "let's find you two a little privacy."

It was only when we tugged Donna to her feet that I noticed we had gathered an audience. Donna blushed furiously but followed the First Lady.

"You sure know how to liven up a long flight, Donna," the President waved us into his private cabin.

"I'm really sorry, Mr. President," tears slid down Donna's face. "We had no idea . . ."

"Don't listen to him, Donna," the First Lady chided while helping me lower Donna onto the bed.

"No, don't listen to me, Donna," the President riposted, "I drove through four false alarms with Elizabeth, two with Eleanor and one with Zoey. All of them in a driving snowstorm, I might add."

"Do you think this is a false alarm?" Donna asked hopefully.

"Jed," Mrs. Bartlet smiled, "get out. And take Josh with you."

Fear darkened Donna's face.

"Mrs. B.," I protested.

She took me by the arm, "Just for a minute, Dad," and shoved me out the door, just behind the President.

The very picture of patience, I shifted my weight at least six or seven times before I spoke. "You think it's a false alarm?"

The President smiled. "No."

I closed my eyes and hung my head, trying to catch my breath.

"Josh?" The First Lady was using her mom voice.

"How soon?" It wasn't until my eyes met hers that I felt the hot tears rolling down my cheeks.

"A hour, maybe two."

"Then we've got time," my mind was spinning. "We can find an airport, and a hospital and . . ."

"Josh," the President interrupted, his hand resting lightly on my tightly crossed arms. "We're on the Trans-Artic Vector. We're nearly six hours from any airfield big enough to take us much less one that has a Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit nearby."

I swallowed hard as the truth soaked in.

"It will happen here, Josh," the First Lady said quietly. "Are you up to it?"

"Do I have a choice?" I asked acidly.

"More than she," the First Lady replied sharply. "If you can't support her, Josh, can't be strong for her then you need to . . ."

"He's up to it," Leo McGarry growled as he moved to my side. "As was his father, and his father's father."

"I'm not sure I'm the man they were, Leo."

Leo's hand barely touched my arm. "I am."

"As am I," the President agreed.

I nodded quickly then turned to Mrs. Bartlet. "Now what?"

"We wait," Mrs. Bartlet smiled as I groaned. "I had the steward bring up your luggage," she waved a hand at my rumpled suit. "You both may want to change into something more comfortable-and washable."

I grabbed the door handle but stopped and faced them-Mrs. Bartlet, Leo, the President-before slipping quietly into the President's cabin as the doctor slipped out. Donna was, not surprisingly, in tears.

"This isn't happening," she said determinedly, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Not here. Not now."

I knelt before her. "I think Mother Nature has other ideas."

"Not here, Josh," she sobbed. "Not now."

I pulled her into my arms, her belly hardening against my chest. "We'll be okay."

She sucked in a short breath and stiffened before, without instruction, commencing her little puffs. "Easy for you to say."

I chuckled as I kneaded her back until the muscles relaxed. "So," I stepped over to the suitcase and rummaged around. "Can I interest you in something more," with a mild leer I held up a slinky nightgown by the shoulders, "comfortable?"

"God, no," she followed me. "It's things like that that got us into this mess." From the very slim selection of casual clothes we'd packed, she picked out a flannel shirt, Harvard sweatpants and white socks.

"Uh, Donna," I helped her slip off her suit, "you realize those are my clothes you picked out, right?"

Her eyes flashed ire. "Nothing of mine fits comfortably anymore, Josh." She pulled on the sweats and buttoned the shirt. "And it's all your fault." She stood tall, hands braced at the small of her back. God, she was huge.

I finished slipping on the only clothes she'd left me--ragged jeans, a waffle-knit pullover and white socks.-before turning her around and pulling her close. "Guilty as charged, your honor," I nuzzled her neck while slipping my arms underneath her belly and gently lifting. She relaxed back into me.

"This is so us, isn't it?" she said ruefully. "Only we would have our first child on Air Force One."

"That's because we're us."

"Yeah, and there's about to be more of us." She turned in my arms. "Aren't you afraid?" Her eyes rounded.

"It'll be fine."

She pecked me on the cheek then led me to the door.

"Where are we going?"

"Josh, I can't sit in here alone with you. You need playmates or you'll drive me crazy before, uh, you know."

Sock-footed, she dragged me down the corridor to the President's salon where we found a poker game in progress.

"Hey, Donna," CJ called, "wanna play?" With a stockinged foot she prodded Sam to scoot over.

"No, thanks," my sweet wife shoved me into the spot made by Sam, "but please keep him entertained for a while."

"Deal him in," Toby instructed and Charlie laid out my cards. "He should be even more of a pigeon than usual."

"Hey," I protested, trying to arrange the really awful hand I'd been dealt. "That's my kid's college fund you're talking about."

"If the college fund is dependent upon your poker skills, your child will be lucky to go to a community college," Sam joked.

One of the great unknown secrets about the Bartlet administration Senior Staff is that, yes, we were all raised in a barn. In times of crisis, or long flights like this one, the shoes come off. Your tie is loosened, the suit coat handy, but the shoes come off. It's kind of like our little rebellion. This-shoeless poker--felt good, normal. Despite the light conversation around the table I tried to concentrate on my hand as Donna rested her forearms on my shoulders until I felt her grip tighten. "Another one?"

"Um-hm."

"Fold," I threw down my cards and stood beside her, kneading her lower back while she rested her forehead on the back of my chair.

"Check," she panted.

"Donna," I chided but Leo picked up my cards. "Now's not the time . . ."

"Donna's right," Leo grinned. "Josh checks."

Leo ghosted my hand for me until the latest contraction eased and Donna plopped wearily into my chair. He pushed the pot in front of her.

"We won?" her face brightened while she straightened the bills.

"Yup," Charlie confirmed.

"Viva la sisterhood," CJ crowed, leaning back while scratching her belly.

"Viva la sisterhood," the First Lady agreed.

"Guys, I think we're in trouble," the President warned while dealing the next hand. "Seems the estrogen level is especially high tonight."

The First Lady arranged her cards, "Well, it's about time."

"Damn straight," Donna agreed, sorting my hand as I leaned over her shoulder. We'd nearly finished that hand when the next pain began. Donna stood suddenly and paced, stopping with her hand again the wall. I backed against the wall and drew her, sideways, to me, massaging belly and back until they relaxed. Then she returned to her hand. This continued, poker and pain, for another hour until, as her knees buckled she buried her head in my shoulder and whispered, "It's time."

I called quietly to the First Lady and she followed us back to the cabin, closing the door to the rest of the world. It was, as had been our entire relationship, at first awkward and uncomfortable, fumbling to find some way to accomplish the task, until, through trial and error we found our way. Only then did I cease to be the superfluous "cheerleader" Leo said he'd felt himself to be at Mallory's birth. This was us-Donna and me, together, producing the miracle we'd dreamed of. And what a miracle it was. He was tiny and thin, but broad-shouldered as Donna pointed out, with whisps of honey-blond hair. His hands were the size of a half-dollar and his feet barely the length of my thumb. He was, as Mrs. Bartlet later said, not quite done yet, but the most important worry we had was silenced when his lusty cry filled the room. I swear he was screaming, "Donna!"

Donna must have heard it, too, because she grinned at me at said, "His father's son."

In a few more minutes, the Doctor was through with the baby and Mrs. Bartlet and I helped Donna crawl into the bed. She rolled onto her side and the Doctor settled our son into the crook of her arm with warnings to keep him warm.

"Congratulations," Dr. Bartlet whispered before pushing the doctor from the room and then we were alone-our little family, alone together for the first time. 

With him between us, I reached for the tiny hand-his fingers wouldn't even wrap around mine. "Oh, my God," I breathed. For some things, there are no words.

I don't know how long we lay there while Donna and the baby dozed wearily. 

"How're you doing, Dad?" the President leaned in the door, Leo peeking over his shoulder.

"Come on in," I whispered. 

Donna's eyes opened dreamily, "Hi."

"Abbey says he's doing great despite being a little underdone," Leo smiled.

The President elaborated. "She says that with Moss strength and Lyman stubbornness, I'll be lucky if the kid isn't President before we land."

"It may take a little longer than that, Mr. President," Donna smiled.

"Well," Leo tugged at the President, "we just came to say congratulations and drop off your poker winnings."

"Poker winnings?" Donna sat up slightly.

"Yeah, the kid's gotta go to college somehow."

"Get some rest," the President instructed as he was dragged out the door.

"Mr. President?" Donna called. "Would you leave the door open?"

Our son spent the next few hours until landing getting to know his family-his White House family. After a quick ride to George Washington University Hospital we were ensconced in a private room for twenty-four hours of observation. The little dude was rooming in-he'd been handled by way too many strange folks to be allowed in the nursery. We'd enjoyed another round of visits from Senior Staff, with the added pleasure of Jordan, Mallory and Andrea. But it had grown late and our little family was finally, blissfully alone. Donna slept peacefully but the baby stirred and I moved beside his little glass crib.

Gently I pulled him into my arms, reveling in his cooing protest at being disturbed. I gazed on my child, newly-born and innocent, and realized that -- be they in Poughkeepsie, Paris, or Pakistan -- other fathers felt this way. In America, we grew and produced a surplus of everything known to man and, rather than share that surplus with the needy of the world, we stockpiled it until prices rose which, of course, they never did. The world didn't resent America's wealth; it resented America's prodigality. Leaning back, I laid him on my chest, over my scar, and nuzzled the honeyed fuzz that capped his tiny head. He cooed when I brushed my fingers across his cheeks then snuggled in, the second miracle in my life covering the first. He deserved shelter and security and sustenance; every child did. Little had I known that a trip to Nashua, NH, to hear a minor New England academic governor would lead me here. 'We will give our children better than we ourselves received.' I had finally found my jihad.


	11. One Picture's Worth a Million Votes

Title: Analecta

Author: N. Y. Smith

Email: minismith@aol.com

Category: AU (very), JDR, Josh POV, Angst, WIP

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Summary: The reminiscences of a guy lucky enough to have become President.

Spoilers: Through Season Three

Author's Notes: Contains references to 9/11/2001. Amy-free universe. 

  
  


One Picture's Worth a Million Votes 

  
  


"The thing I remember most about the summer of 2002 is how little I remember about the summer of 2002."

Sam Seaborn

The Real Thing: President Josiah Bartlet, 2010

  
  


"The thing I remember most about the summer of 2002 is how little I want to remember about the summer of 2002."

Claudia Jean Cregg

Sister, Sister, 2007

  
  
  
  


"The thing I remember most about the summer of 2002 is how much I'm unable to forget about the summer of 2002."

Toby Ziegler

Freedom's Voice, 2008

  
  
  
  


If you're in politics long enough you get to see the really wretched people get their just desserts-including the ones on your own side. Bruno Gianelli and his people had been pulling out all the stops on the campaign and we were still down ten points to our esteemed opponent. We'd done the talk shows, cut ribbons, debated until we were blue in the face and kissed every baby in America to little avail. And then, out of the blue, it happened.

It was a grainy picture, carried two days before the election on the front page of the Conservative Christian newspaper, The Guardian. The photo was of a campaign strategy meeting that had taken place a few weeks prior during a swing through Florida. It was taken from a boat off of a private beach during a rare moment when it was just us-the President and First Lady, the Senior Staff and their wives-Bruno and the Bobbsey Twins were nowhere in sight. We were on the veranda of the ocean-front house discussing-read that arguing-the near-certain dismal outcome of the Florida, and the national, vote. The approaching sunset had bathed us all in gold despite the shade from the awning. In sharp focus were four very, very pregnant women with the Senior Staff in the left slightly fuzzy. The cutline read "Family Values?" and an editorial piece accompanied it.

Obviously authored by Mary Marsh and her minions, it reminded the nation that the President had lied about his illness and his wife of over thirty years had been complicit. It revealed that the Chief of Staff-having left his wife of nearly thirty years--had been frittering away his time in the company of a powerful attorney. Paying no attention to the small detail that it was Jenny who left Leo and that he hadn't worked less than an eighteen hour day since we'd arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the article continued on to expose the wicked truth that the Deputy Chief of Staff had apparently corrupted his assistant and then had, the cad, married her a mere seven months before she gave birth to their one-month-premature child. He had defiled her again, obviously, for she was then pregnant with their second child. The Communications Director had contributed to this debauchery by reconciling with his wife, whose wedding ring he'd never removed, before having their divorce set aside all the while causing her to be in the family way. His Deputy Director had demonstrated his moral bankruptcy by returning to the love of his life before, inconveniently, being nearly killed in a domestic terrorist attack. The resultant delay of their wedding allowed the product of their joy at his survival to become increasingly evident. The most heinous of us all was, of course, the wanton woman who'd fallen in love with, and promised to marry, a man whom God punished for his sins by allowing him to be hacked to death just after filming a Peabody-prize winning report on the Muslim extremists who had instituted a world-wide fusillade of terror.

CJ saw it first, on a copy messengered to her from Mary Marsh. She had been standing in the bullpen when it was delivered to her, talking to Carol, and I remember the way she swayed as she read it. The tears began and her hands flew to her belly while the newspaper fluttered to the floor. Sam had reached her first, almost carrying her back to her office, where she huddled with the women-Carol, Donna, Ginger and the First Lady-until she emerged, livid.

"I hope she rots in Hell," she hissed on her way to the Press Room. Miraculously, not a soul asked her about it even though I know I saw at least twenty copies in the room. Sam, for his part, was already plotting retribution. Toby nodded conspiratorially while I feigned ignorance of the conspiracy.

The photo ran, nationally, the next morning-Election Day. In a rare example of cosmic justice, or Divine Intervention, most of the metropolitan dailies ran the article below the fold on the op-ed page and the picture above the fold on the front page. In the Washington Post, the cutline was missing the question mark and the photo had been sharpened considerably so that you could see the details that Mary Marsh wanted obscured.

On the left side of the group shot Toby sat in a chair at the end of a sofa, intently reading a sheaf of papers he held in one hand while massaging Andy Wyatt's propped-up feet with the other. Andy was on the end of the sofa, leaning away from him to point to something on the paper in my left hand. CJ peered with Leo from behind the couch, one hand on Andy's shoulder and the other resting on the shelf formed by her belly. Almost obscured by her was the First Lady who was massaging CJ's lower back while talking over her shoulder at the President who had slipped an arm around his wife's waist while his other hand rested on my oldest son's curly head as he snuggled on my shoulder. I patted my son's back as one tiny hand wrapped around my now-dangling necktie and the other wrapped around his mother's right index finger. Donna's unshod feet were tangled with mine and her left hand lay gently on the shoulder of Mallory O'Brien-Seaborn while reading the papers Mallory held in her right hand. She sat, Indian-style, on the floor between Donna and Sam, who peered over her shoulder, his right foot rubbing gently against her left knee, his head propped on one arm while the other kneaded his reminder of the Christmas tragedy-a throbbing left temple. It was but an instant frozen in time but one that showed, undeniably, the thread of life that had come to bind us together. It was an image the voters took with them to the polls.

At midnight, after a shocking, come-from-behind performance, our opponent conceded. Down ten points and twelve electoral votes the week before, we'd won the popular vote by less than a million and the electoral vote by two. But it was enough. A flummoxed Bruno Gianelli ordered Joey Lucas to ferret out the explanation, but was totally unprepared for the result. Of the voters sampled-ones who'd reversed their previous decision to vote for our opponent-ninety-nine percent confessed that the picture-not our platform, or our policies-had changed their mind. The American voters looked at that group and decided Josiah Bartlet and his adopted family were the people they wanted in the White House.

But even that news, that we'd won, paled in comparison to the night's other events. At 11:57 p.m., just under the deadline, CJ Cregg gave birth to a son. We, Sam and Mallory and Donna and I heard that report, then watched on the waiting room TV as we found out where we'd spend the next four years raising our children. I say "ours" because Mallory and Sam contributed a daughter on Veteran's Day and Andy and Toby a son on Thanksgiving. For Christmas we all got together in the Mural Room and gave the President a portrait taken by the same guy who'd snapped the "victory" picture (imagine his surprise when the Deputy Chief of Staff summoned him to the White House). It joined his family photographs on his desk in the Oval Office, and then at the farm at Manchester, until his death.

  
  



	12. Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead

  
  


Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead 

  
  


I used to think term limits were evil-they were good for Republican administrations and unfair to the Democrats-until January 31, 2003, when we were finally able to drop the proverbial house on the Wicked Witch of the Right-also known as Mary Marsh. Whenever someone would tell me Mary Marsh was coming to the White House, I had visions of Miss Gulch pedaling along with Toto imprisoned in the basket. I couldn't help it; it just came to me along with that loopy music. She did little to dispel that vision. And so it came to pass that I was standing in the Roosevelt Room, between Sam and Toby, with a malicious grin on my face, waiting for the WWR.

"I can't believe you're smiling," Sam sputtered. "She called our wives and CJ whores; our children bastards."

"The issues we have to resolve are important, Sam." My smile grew even broader. "We can put personal feelings on the back burner for that."

"Maybe you can," Sam muttered.

"Sam," Toby had been watching me through knitted brow, "trust us." I saw a smile twitch at the corners of his mouth before it disappeared again. "Have you ever watched a shark?"

"What?" Sam's face contorted but then the entourage strode through the door.

Toby said later that he could see it-- like the eye coverings of a shark sliding into place before the kill-the change in my face as my prey came into range. I remember only that he seemed to shiver a bit then. I held out my hand. "Mary, Al, so nice of you to fit us into your schedule." See, sweet as pie.

"So nice of you to squeeze us in between assignations," Marsh sniped, but I refused the bait.

"How's family life treating you gentlemen?" I really liked Rev. Al Caldwell. He had the rare gift of caring about people with whom he disagreed.

"Ask me when I've had some sleep," Sam chuckled and the Reverend smiled.

"Children are a gift from God, aren't they?" The Reverend sat and we followed.

"Not according to your Family Values Act," Toby said quietly. "At least, not all of them."

"That's not the intent of the act, Toby," the Reverend explained. "The Family Values Act offers incentives for couples to seek counseling before marrying, for prospective parents to marry before the birth of their children, and for couples considering divorce to explore all other options before dissolution."

"It does that, sir," Toby explained, "but there's more to it."

"No," the Reverend disagreed. "The bill closed this afternoon."

"Yes, it did," Sam confirmed, "but not before some of the more conservative members hung a rider on it."

Caldwell glanced sideways at his uncharacteristically-wordless cohort. "What sort of rider?"

Toby, Sam and I sat mute.

"Mary?" he turned to his associate. "Mary, what rider?"

"The only way people will cooperate is if there is a financial incentive to do so, Al," she blustered.

His face reddened. "What kind of financial incentive?"

"Mary?"

She held her tongue.

He looked to us.

I tapped my pen on the wooden table. "Children of married parents qualify for higher health and education benefits than others."

The Reverend went white.

"I take it you knew nothing of any rider?" Toby asked calmly.

He shook his head, eyes bulging.

She spat out, "'I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be; for they are a very perverted generation, children in whom there is no faith.'"(1)

He turned his glare to Mary Marsh, quoting, "'But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he had denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.'"(2)

"Am I to infer from your reaction that the Christian League would not approve of such a rider?"

The Reverend faced them. "You infer correctly. This rider will never see the light of day, gentlemen. I promise it."

"Good," I nodded. "Thanks for . . ."

"Hi, Dad!" a voice called from the door and three heads turned.

The voice belonged to my wife who held our eight-month-old's outstretched arms as he tiptoed slowly toward me, honey-colored curls jostling in time to his halting steps.

"Hey, buddy," I scooped him into my arms then leaned over my wife's again-pregnant belly. "Hi," I grinned then pecked her on the lips.

"Is it really six o'clock?" Sam asked.

"Yes, Samuel," Mallory O'Brien deposited their daughter in his arms.

"After, actually," Andrea Wyatt handed her son to his father.

"It's the best time of the day," Abigail Bartlet slid into the room, her arms also full of a precious child. "Little Will gets to help Mommy until she goes home."

"Here you are!" CJ rushed into the room, pulling her son into her embrace while the rest of us greeted the First Lady.

"Sorry, Reverend," I apologized. "I didn't realize it was this late."

"Time for the harem to return?" Mary Marsh asked acidly. "I'd bet they're not even sure who belongs to whom."

"Oh, they know."

"Good evening, Mr. President, " we chorused.

The President stole the baby away from CJ. "I thought you were coming by my office first, Abigail."

"Jed, the actual parents have the right to see their children first."

The President chuffed, before nuzzling the child in his arms. Then he greeted each of the other children, individually and by name, before speaking to the guests. "Good evening, Al, Ms. Marsh."

"Good evening, Mr. President."

He turned to me, "Did you get that Family Values Act thing worked out?"

"We certainly did, sir." I grinned. "I don't think we'll have anymore surprises."

Reverend Caldwell cut his eyes to Marsh. "I can assure you of that, Mr. President."

"Outstanding," the President jostled the child, who gurgled. "Ms. Marsh, I'm glad we caught you before you left."

"Charlie said you wanted to see me, Mr. President?" Leo McGarry gathered his granddaughter into his arms.

"Yes, Leo. I didn't think you'd want to miss this."

"Miss what?" Leo tickled the baby.

"You wanted this, Mr. President?" Charlie Young held out a small gift box.

"Yes, Charlie," the President handed the baby back to CJ and turned to Mary Marsh. "I thought you'd all want to be here for this little presentation. This very small token of our even smaller esteem is for you, Ms. Marsh, on the occasion of your last visit to the White House."

"You can't . . ." she sputtered.

"Oh, yes he can," Leo, Toby and I said in unison.

"And, since you will, in all likelihood, be a private citizen very soon," Al Caldwell nodded vigorously, "let me introduce the ladies you've so crassly referred to as the White House Wh . . ."

"Jed!" Abbey Bartlet cut him off, "tender ears are listening."

"Pardon me," he nodded to us. "From your right is Representative Andrea Wyatt, a member of Congress and the wife of the White House Director of Communications. You should call her Congresswoman Wyatt. Next to her is CJ Cregg, Ms. Cregg to you, who is the White House Press Secretary and will be accorded all respect and courtesy due her position. At her left is educator Mallory O'Brien Seaborn, the daughter of the White House Chief of Staff and the wife of the White House Deputy Director of Communications. You might want to call her Mrs. Seaborn. And, finally, let me introduce Donna Moss Lyman, the Assistant to the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Planning and wife of the White House Deputy Chief of Staff and White House Deputy Director of the Office of Homeland Security. You may address her as Mrs. Lyman. I make these introductions so you will be able to speak to them properly should you see them outside the White House-which will be the only place you'll be seeing them unless you can con your Congressman into signing you up for a tour." He nodded and a uniformed guard ushered her down the hall. "Well, guys, did I get it right?"

"Perfect!" I laughed and shared a victory handshake with Toby.

Reverend Caldwell offered Donna, and each of the ladies his hand. "My apologies ladies. I can only muster the utmost respect for you," he patted each of the children, "and these lovely little blessings."

"Thanks, Reverend," I said. "You know you're welcome any time."

He nodded and stepped lightly down the hall.

"Well," CJ turned back to us, "that made for some interesting dinner theater."

"Who came up with that little drama?" Mallory patted her daughter, who was still grinning at her grandfather.

"Well," Andi ruffled her son's curly head, "I could see Josh's fingerprints all over it."

"And Toby's." Donna said while Toby and I faked umbrage.

"But I thought vengeance wasn't Jewish," Leo jiggled his granddaughter.

"It isn't," the President explained. "But sometimes justice needs a helping hand."

We all nodded until we realized Sam's face bore a puzzled expression like he couldn't quite hear something.

"Sam, what's wrong?" Mallory's face clouded.

"Nothing," he responded reflexively, but Mallory's face forced him to elaborate.

Now Sam is a veritable cornucopia of memories, but this one stands at the forefront, even if only as an example of that freaky bond-that folie a deux-- we seemed to share.

"It's just that," we all leaned in for the explanation, "when Mary Marsh was leaving, I swear I could hear Munchkins singing."

1. Deuteronomy 32:20 New Scofield Reference Edition, 1967 

2. 1 Timothy 5:8 New Scofield Reference Edition, 1967 


	13. The Ties That Bind Us

The Ties That Bind Us

  
  


"One of the great assets of mankind is its ability to endure anything; one of mankind's greatest faults is its ability to put up with anything."

Toby Ziegler

Freedom's Voice, 2008

  
  


The war dragged on, casualty counts and war-zone reports becoming a part of the daily newscasts. Occasionally the military operations would turn up a small pocket of terrorists, but the expeditions were mostly fruitless. The fervor and fear from September, 2001, faded to a benign toleration of the ongoing threat. Domestic security alerts, and most were false alarms, were issued as intelligence indicated but were mostly ignored by the general public. We weren't much different. Constant exposure to extraordinary circumstances make you crave the ordinary. Indulging that craving was nearly tragic for all of us.

The pace had been murderous the summer of 2003-the constant communications morass that consumed Toby, Sam and CJ and my travel on behalf of the Office of Homeland Security. It was the last week before the schools would start and Mallory was bringing the baby by for lunch. It was an unseasonably cool day in early August, which meant the temperature was down to muggy, and The Sisterhood (well, it beats The Harem) had decided on a lunchtime picnic. The assistants had been alerted to the activity and all of our schedules had been cleared at noon for Operation Lafayette Park. Andy was coming over from the Hill and stopping off at the day care in the OEOB to pick up her baby. Donna, CJ and I were meeting her there then proceeding to the rendezvous point in the park. Toby and Sam were going directly to the park to help Mallory set up the blankets and the food.

The pickup went smoothly. CJ practically sprinted with her son while Donna walked a little more slowly with our new baby. I grappled with our fifteen-month-old who alternately wanted to walk, run, be carried and carry his baby brother. We managed to join the group under a spreading tree with a minimum of fuss.

"Can't believe you're in town, Josh," Mallory teased through a bite of fried chicken while keeping an eye on the baby who was trying to crawl across the blanket spread over the grass.

"What day is this?" I asked just before cramming a fork containing potato salad in my mouth.

"Wednesday," Andy answered.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yes, Josh," Toby said impatiently.

"Well," I swallowed, "if it's Wednesday I'm definitely in Washington because if it were Tuesday I'd still be in . . ."

"Harlingen, Texas," Donna supplied, corraling our older son. "And if it were Monday, you'd still be in . . ."

"Ruidoso, New Mexico," I answered, "with the cattle ranchers."

"Doesn't Buckland do any traveling?" Mallory asked. "Seems like you're gone all the time."

"He travels the end of the week," CJ explained, slipping applesauce to her baby boy.

"What's with the travel?" Mallory continued despite Sam's warning glare.

"Face time," Donna parroted my explanation to her. "When it comes to inspiring confidence, there's no substitute for it."

"Can't the Vice-President do it?"

"He does it, too, Mallory," Sam sputtered. "He has an even heavier schedule than Josh and Buckland."

"Wow, Mallory," Andy Wyatt elbowed her husband, "did you make the potato salad?"

"Yeah, Mallory," Toby continued obediently, "I really like the, uh, what the hell are these, onions?"

"No," Mallory explained, "Mom made it, from her mother's recipe."

"Jenny made the potato salad?" Josh stage-choked. "Then Sam and I'd better head to the hospital now cause she hates us so much she's likely to have poisoned it."

"She doesn't hate you, at least not Sam," Mallory winked.

"It's amazing how the production of grandchildren raises one's value in the eyes of the in-laws," Sam opined.

"Sometimes," Josh glanced pointedly at his wife, "as long as they're not too close together."

"Oh, come on," CJ gestured with a half-eaten chicken-leg.

Toby finished her thought, "You guys aren't, um, you know again are you?"

Donna turned scarlet and, judging by the heat radiating from my face, I was, too. Conveniently, my toddler decided to toddle away and I chased him down and scooped him up, returning just in time to hear Donna's explanation.

"We're not planning," she fished for words.

"We're just not preventing," I finished for her. "When you're as old as I am . . ."

"Old, my ass," Toby contradicted.

"When you got as late a start as we did . . ."

"Whose fault was that, Josh? Besides, what's the rush?" CJ jostled her son.

"We're not really sure," Donna teared up. "I mean, it's really too soon to tell and . . ." I pulled her into my embrace while they all shared that look.

And then my friend, my friend Sam, the one who'd been my best man, for whom I'd been best man, the man I was going to ask to raise my children should anything happen to Donna and me, my friend wielded the coup de grace, "From what I've seen, if you two aren't preventing, you're planning."

My face, which had cooled a bit, heated up again, but his gentle smile tempered the sting of the remark. I could feel Donna shaking but couldn't tell if she were laughing or crying so I lifted her chin and found tears streaming down her face alternating with laughter. Oh yeah, I shared a knowing glance with my friends, number three was definitely on the way.

"They're just jealous," Andy consoled with a smirk.

"Oh, yeah," Toby lied, "we just really want to extend the sleep deprivation another couple of years." Andy thumped him on the arm.

"Leave them alone, guys," CJ said quietly, holding up her son's hands while he stumbled along.

"It's okay," Donna wrapped her hand around CJ's arm. "I seem to remember ours wasn't the only little bundle of joy named in that cartoon-what was it?"

CJ grinned, "'Four storks flew over the Eagle's Nest.' I have it framed in my office."

"So does Leo," I picked off some chicken and fed it to my older son.

"Where?" Mallory gathered trash.

"Behind his desk," CJ gathered her trash.

Toby handed the baby to Andrea, "With his pictures."

Sam walked their daughter, "Between the picture of the baby and . . ."

I pulled Donna to her feet, "The napkin the President gave him back."

"The best part," Donna wiped her face with a napkin, "is the little bubble at the bottom of the radar guy saying about the storks. . ."

Sam exchanged the baby for the armload of blankets his wife carried, "'They don't fit any of our profiles, sir, but it looks like a full-fledged attack!'"

We all smirked.

"At least they can't say we didn't accomplish anything while we were in office," CJ walked reluctantly back toward the White House.

The park was full that day, lots of tourists, some playing catch, others with Frisbees. Sam, Toby and I had become the designated beasts of burden, lagging behind with armloads of blankets and baskets. A Frisbee, it was red as I remember, fluttered behind Toby and in front of Sam and me. A young man trotted after it, bumping into Toby's back. Toby fell forward, yelling something that didn't register at first, and the young man took off to a waiting car. Then it registered that Toby had shouted, "Run."

Dropping our burdens we ran to him, screaming to our families to run, which they did, right to the gates of the White House. We flanked our friend's prostrate form, not daring to touch the handle of the blade that stuck out from the center of his back.

"Are they okay?" he asked wetly, voice barely more than a whisper.

"They're safe," Sam answered, his hand spread across Toby's shoulder.

He nodded then whispered, "Cold."

Frantically, I spread one of the picnic blankets over him then folded my hand in his. "You're gonna be fine, Toby."

In an instant we were surrounded by Park Police, Secret Service, DC police. It seemed forever until he was loaded into an ambulance then we walked back to the White House. After a brief word with our own families, we gathered up Andrea and headed for the parking lot but our exit was blocked by a small phalanx of Secret Service agents. My old shadow Lurch stepped forward but, instead of trying to stop me, handed me my suit coat and a panic button saying, "Follow me, sir."

I obeyed without protest, clipping the panic button to my belt next to my pager, "I suppose we're going to see a lot of each other from now on, Agent?"

"So it would seem, Mr. Lyman."

I slipped on my coat, chilled despite the August warmth, "Call me Josh, Agent Lurcael."

He preceded me through the door, "Lurch, Mr. Lyman."

"Of course, Agent Lurcael." Then we climbed into the armored SUV for yet another trip to the hospital.

Toby's injuries were not life-threatening-punctured, nicked really, lung and partial paralysis which meant a cane. That's what the doctors told us. True enough, he survived, but it was a long time before he lived again. Andy seemed to understand, even if she couldn't share it. She left that to us. Each of us understood his need to grieve, in his own way, for the person he'd been before he could accept the person he'd become. 

CJ-who never left her emotions completely unguarded-now shared her heart only with her son. We still had a part of it, of her, but she'd thrown up a protective wall that we could never completely breach. Sam-always confident of his intellect-now worried that it, too, had been damaged along with his sight and hearing. And I, well, I remained a mess of guilt and loss, trying desperately to cram the life I wanted into the few short years predicted for me. It was late fall again before Toby spoke of it, hobbling on his ever-present cane as we returned from a lunchtime visit to the daycare center in the OEOB.

"I felt it, you know," he slowed and we did the same. "The knife." He stopped. "I felt the sting as it pierced my skin, then the sear of the nerves as they were severed, then the tingling in my leg as the neural pathways shut down."

"That must have been terrifying," CJ said quietly.

He shook his head, sitting on a retaining wall while our protective details maintained a discreet distance. "What was terrifying was knowing they could kill any of you-including Andy and the baby-and I couldn't do anything about it." He studied the head of his cane. "I'm charged with running a country and I couldn't protect my own family."

CJ joined him on the wall. "All I remember is the numbing quiet. Even in the middle of the bullpen, there was a silence that surrounded me for the longest. I finally realized the silence was that place in my heart where Will's voice had been. I'd blocked it out because it hurt so much to hear it."

Sam had sat on the other side of Toby. "Do you hear it anymore?"

She thought moment then smiled. "Yeah. I hear it in the baby's laughter and it makes me smile to know he's not completely gone. Silly, isn't it?"

"No," Toby shook his head.

"I don't remember anything," Sam whispered. "I was driving down the street and, the next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital, half-blind and half-deaf." He rubbed his left temple before continuing. "But those are only input tools. You take the information in and your heart and your brain sort it out. It took me a long time to realize that I had more than enough brains and heart to make up for the loss."

"I remember everything." A siren startled me and I grinned sheepishly. "But I guess you all know that. I guess everybody knows that."

"Josh," Sam consoled.

"It felt like somebody kicked me in the chest, then like a burst of fire. I remember backing against the wall and I looked down and there was blood. I could feel my heart pounding and with every beat it pumped more blood onto the sidewalk. I remember Toby, and the paramedics and the sirens, the hospital and the slow fade to black. The last thing I remember is thinking that Joanie was dead, too, and Donna and I never had the chance to give my mother grandchildren." I crossed my arms. "Then I woke up and remembered that everyone I cared about got hurt, so I set about pushing her, and everyone else, away."

"You were doing a great job," Toby observed wryly.

"You changed your mind after that Christmas," Sam offered. "About everybody but Donna, I guess."

"That summer after Rosslyn convinced me that I could never do enough for Donna, be enough for Donna, but she'd never leave me. So I had to push her away."

"What changed your mind?" CJ asked.

"Watching three thousand people die in an instant." I leaned my head back and inhaled. "I realized that, if our positions were reversed, I would have wanted the chance. So I asked, and she said yes."

"And is apparently still saying yes," Sam teased.

CJ grinned, "Two boys and a girl? At least three times."

"Four," I corrected sheepishly.

"Excuse me?" CJ swatted my arm. "Have you lost your mind?"

Sam gulped. "I thought you were traveling three days a week now . . ."

"Apparently, that's not enough," Toby observed.

"Donna says it's her last," I emphasized the word, "chance to even the odds. She thinks two boys and two girls would be nice even numbers." I licked my lip. "Two for Joanie and two for us."

Agent Lurcael looked around for the tenth time, as did the others' protective details.

"The natives are getting restless," CJ observed.

"And we still have a country to run," I eased off the retaining wall and down the path.

"Taskmaster," Sam tossed before following, leaving CJ and Toby a quiet moment. I stopped and turned, looking at my friends with a sigh.

"Are you alright, Mr. Lyman?" my protector asked quietly.

I shook my head. "Of all the things we could have had in common, pain is the last thing I would have wanted."

Lurcael met my gaze, "You may share a common pain, Mr. Lyman, but anyone could see it's hope that binds you together." 

I thought for a moment, nodded, then let him usher me back into the West Wing.

  
  



	14. The View From Mt. Pisgah

The View From Mt. Pisgah   
  


"And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, . . . And the Lord said unto him, This is the land which I swore unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed. I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over there. . . . And Joshua, the son of Nun, was full of the Spirit of wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him."

Deuteronomy 34:1, 4, 9

  
  


My early dissension about the use of military assets had caused the President to limit my wartime responsibilities primarily to domestic defense-which suited me just fine. From the beginning, a military response seemed like a dead end. So I contented myself with the White House and the Office of Homeland Security-keeping up with the war just in case Leo needed a pinch hitter. I never expected to get in the game.

After you've worked in the White House for a while, you become accustomed to the break-neck pace. You become so acclimated that a "slow" day not only is a welcome relief, but the occasion of dread, like the eery stillness before a wild summer storm (okay, I'm channeling Sam again). Since Donna was still on family leave from our fourth baby, I'd planned to leave early and had slipped by Leo's office to say goodnight. It was empty.

"He had a meeting away from the building," Margaret explained despite my lack of request for explanation.

"Okay," I said. "Good night." I turned to leave, but something about her made me face her again.

"What kind of meeting?"

"An outside the building kind of meeting," Margaret replied hastily.

"A good meeting or a bad meeting?"

She paled.

"Margaret, please don't make me play twenty questions. Where's Leo?"

She dipped her head and murmured so I lifted her chin. "He's sick, Josh."

"With what?"

She merely shook her head.

"Is he at home?"

She nodded. I patted her hand then bounded to my car. A kaleidoscopic nightmare of possibilities flashed through my mind during the short drive to his hotel. Even more entertained me during the elevator ride.

Leo's gonna be pissed, I thought as I walked down the carpeted hall. He hates for anyone to know his private affairs. Let him be pissed, I rapped my knuckles on the door. Jordan answered. Her face was drawn, long-term weariness blackening her eye sockets.

"Hey," I greeted, not waiting for an invitation to step inside.

"Hi," she grasped my hands in hers, tears filling her red eyes.

I pulled her into my arms, silently waiting for her sobbing to abate while trying to prevent my own tears. After several minutes the shaking stopped and she pulled back to arm's length, pasting a look of false bravado on her face. "He won't want you to see him like this."

"I've already seen him like this, Jordan. Last time it was from a bottle." 

She hung her head. "I almost wish it were that."

"Me, too," I agreed. "You look like you could use some air." She began shaking her head while I let my suit coat slip down my arms then tossed it on the nearest chair with my backpack. "Get out for a while, I'll stay."

"But, Donna," Jordan protested, "you have a family to take care of . . ."

"I am taking care of my family," I corrected. "If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of him. Take a little time for yourself."

Reluctantly, she nodded, then let herself out. Donna's voice burned the phone connection at first, but a brief explanation silenced her. I pulled off my tie, rolled up my sleeves and sat down with my files while listening for sounds from the bedroom. For half an hour or so, there was fitful snoring, then was replaced by the ragged sound of retching. With a sigh of resignation, I packed stepped into the bathroom and moistened a washrag with cold water, draping it over the back of Leo's neck while rubbing his back. Eventually, he collapsed back against the bathtub and dragged the wet rag down his pallid face.

"Better?" I spoke for the first time and his eyes popped wide.

"Where's Jordan? Get out."

"She's taking a break," I explained, flushing the toilet before settling myself on the floor leaning against the vanity one arm dangling from a propped-up knee.

"I don't want you here."

"You need me here."

Leo reddened slightly. "I need you in the White House."

"You have me there, too."

"Do I?" he blanched and retched again.

I held him steady until he calmed again, then rinsed the rag and wiped his face while he slumped against the tub.

"It isn't booze or pills," he confessed but my heart had already guessed. "It 's cancer-- stage three oat-cell carcinoma." 

He held out the rag and I stood and held it under the cold water. "Where?" I asked as I wrung out the cloth and held it out to him then, still standing, leaned against the sink.

His hand trembled as he took the cloth and wiped his neck. "Brain and spine."

"Are you in pain?"

His eyes met mine and I could see him wondering just how much to say. "Yes." 

"Does Mallory know?" To his headshake I replied. "You should tell her; you owe her that."

He held out his hand and I tugged him to his feet. He was so light, and his sweat-soaked pajamas clung to his wasted frame. How could I have missed this?

"Did they give you something for the nausea?"

He leaned against me while he staggered to the bed, waving at the collection of pill bottles. I lowered him gently then rifled the drawers for another set of pajamas, which I lay next to him. "Icewater?"

He nodded and I left him to change while I fixed his glass. When I returned he'd leaned back against a pile of pillows at the head of the bed. I searched through the amber vials, picking up two. "Phenergan for nausea. That's what they gave my Dad." 

He sat up and I poured the recommended dose into his palm and he washed it down with a sip of the cold water, wincing as he swallowed. I poured the pain dosage into his palm and he smiled ruefully. "Do you know how hard I had to work to get off of these?" Then he chased them with the water before easing back onto the pillows. I pulled a chair to the bedside after turning off the bathroom and overhead light. He reached for the book on his night stand and I picked it up, handing him his glasses.

"Nixon's Ten Commandments of Statecraft." I crooked my eyebrow at him while proffering the slim volume. "Going over to the dark side on us, Leo?"

"Nah," he waved me to the chair. "Just had an idea." Laying his book on his chest, he regarded me over the frames of his glasses. "Are you really with me? Even if it means getting mixed up in the war?"

"Yeah," I replied without hesitation. "What do you need?"

"I need Joshua Lyman and all the passion and tenacity he brings with him," he said gently. "I need you to finish it for me." 

His eyes closed and I leaned over him, placing my splayed hand over his heart. "Whatever you need," I promised.

He shuddered and his eyes popped open, searching my face. "Why are you doing this?"

I shrugged, "I serve at the pleasure of the President."

"No," he corrected, covering my hand with his. "This."

"Because," a lone tear betrayed me. "Because this is what sons do for old friends of their fathers."

He nodded, then his eyes fell shut and soon he was snoring lightly. I returned to my files in the sitting room, then, after Jordan's return, went home. Setting my backpack on the table, I worked my way through the house, kissing each sleeping child before relaxing in a scalding shower. Sliding into our bed, I curled myself around my wife, who curled her arms around mine, then cried myself to sleep.


	15. Nexus

Nexus

  
  


Always remember that covenants should be openly agreed to but privately negotiated.

James C. Humes, Nixon's Ten Commandments of Statecraft, 1997(1)

  
  


Donna wrapped her arms around me and turned on her best pout. "Are you sure you can't tell me anything more about where you're going?"

"It's just a grip and grin to Greece with the Vice-President." I shrugged, backing against the kitchen counter. "We'll spend more time in the air than we will on the ground."

"Then why do they need you?" Her eyes, mine too, sat in darkened sockets-the result of another five-alarm night.

"My internationally-famous charm?" I grinned in vain.

She pulled away but I held firm.

"You promised, Josh. You promised you'd put the family first."

"I do, Donna . . ."

"Then why are you leaving me with three toddlers and a premature infant to go running off on a glorified photo-op with Hoynes?" She jerked away.

I dragged my hand down my face then gripped the edge of the counter. "Please don't do this, Donna. Not now."

"That's what I'm asking," she folded her arms and leaned against the refrigerator. "Let Sam go, let Toby go. They don't have the responsibilities you have."

"No, they don't," I agreed. "And that's why I have to go."

She studied me hard for a long minute. "This is more than you're telling me, isn't it?"

I studied the floor.

"How important is it?" she challenged.

I met her glare. "As important as it gets."

She drew and let out a ragged breath. "Is it dangerous?"

Silently, I pulled her into my embrace, each of us clinging to the other until Lurcael's familiar knock rattled the door. "I am my beloved's," I whispered into her sweet, soft hair.

"And my beloved is mine," she promised, our hands threaded together until the instant the door separated us.

Air Force Two, although smaller than the commodious Presidential transport, still offered many conveniences unavailable on commercial conveyance. It carried the same state of the art DOD-grade communications capabilities as the President's plane, as well as amenities such as a staff conference room, which the Vice-President and his entourage occupied at this moment, making last-minute adjustments to a campaign photo op so it wouldn't look quite so much like a campaign photo op.

I sat in a staff work area, files for my meeting spread around me. It was quiet, the jet engines droning out most noise, a still night without turbulence. I closed my eyes for just an instant, just to rest them and the next thing I heard was, "Jesus, boy, you look like hell."

I jerked upright, briefing book screeching across the table, before forming an intelligent reply, "Huh?"

"Sleep a rare commodity at your house?" Albie Duncan drawled, his voice as time-worn as his face.

"And at the White House," I corrected.

"Well, that's nothing new," he chuckled, folding himself into the seat across the table and tenting his hands.

I checked my watch.

"Another hour to Athens," the Vice-President announced. I tried, unsuccessfully, to stand but Albie Duncan only nodded.

John Hoynes offered his hand. "You guys have a contingency plan in case this all goes to hell?"

Duncan's Missouri baritone twanged. "Believe me, Mr. Vice-President. If this all goes to hell, there won't be enough left of either of us to require first-class postage."

With sincere good wishes he left us, and when the plane landed, instead of leaving with Hoynes, we exited with the crew. A military helicopter awaited and within an hour we were shaking the hand of the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister.

It was nearly noon and the tang of the sea seasoned the sweet smell of flowers carried on the light breeze in the corridor through which Albie Duncan and I followed a guardsman to a tiled conference room.

"Showtime," I muttered as we crossed the threshold joining representatives from ten Muslim nations. I dipped my head in deference, shooting Duncan a rueful glance: we'd invited twice that many. We took our places at the table and, twelve hours later, walked into the spicy moonlight with little more than throbbing headaches. Another helicopter ride back to Athens and we plodded across the tarmac to Air Force Two. Seated again in the staff cabin I leaned across the table to Duncan, "That was a waste of time," the bitter taste of failure putting an edge to my voice.

"It's too soon to tell," Duncan shook his head, "things over here tend to have their own time schedule."

"Well," I rubbed my eyes, "considering all we agreed on was that terrorism is bad but couldn't quite define it any more specifically than 'what the other guys are doing' . . ."

"Patience, my boy," Albie grinned. "This was just the preview. The real deal will be the next one."

I opened my briefing book and gazed at the faces in a picture I pulled from the pocket. "I hope so, Albie."

Chasing the moon, it was still dark when we landed at Edwards. For once, my detail came in handy, for I could barely walk, much less drive. Dumping my things just inside the door, I staggered down the hall, stopping for a few minutes at each bed. The boys, aged three and two, shared a room sleeping in twin rather than bunk beds. Our older daughter, who was one, stirred while I watched her slumber in one of two cribs. Her baby sister, born twelve weeks too soon, slept fitfully in a crib in our room, her breathing monitor taking up a corner of the dresser. Rubbing the baby's back, I turned toward the bathroom and succumbed to the shower's siren call.

"Hi," Still damp, I curled around my wife and whispered into her hair.

"You're home," she cooed, then snuggled back into my embrace. "I was hoping you'd make it today."

"Today?"

"Today was supposed to have been the pixie's birthday." She lay her hand against the cradle. "And since she is your daughter, she couldn't wait three months to finish."

"How efficient of her," I observed. Stroking Donna's arm I asked, "How's she sleeping?"

"Up four times already," Donna said wearily. "How'd it go?"

"How'd it go here?"

"Partly cloudy with scattered showers," she grinned. "We all get whiny when you're away. Including your mom." I felt her tense, slightly. "Was it worth it? The trip?"

This was the first volley in an exchange that was repeated with increasing intensity after every trip away. "It was important, Donna."

She rolled to face me but backed away. "As important as your family, Joshua? We needed you here."

"My family, and a lot of other families, is why it's important."

I felt the temperature drop. "You promised, Josh." Then she turned her back to me. I curled myself around her, but we didn't quite fit together, somehow.

Leo, the next morning, asked about the negotiations. I replied, tiredly, "I've seen glaciers move faster."

"Keep at it; you never know what's happening behind the scenes."

"I know," I scrubbed my hand over my sandpaper eyes.

"How were things at home?"

"Unseasonably cool."

But Albie Duncan and I persisted. Occasionally, the President or Vice-President would visit a Muslim nation and we'd tag along, meeting with representatives. Increasingly, though, we worked independently.

Although sparse at first, attendance at our little peace sessions increased some after a suicide bombing in Amman in May of 2006. But one single word in a communique, intercepted in September 2006, caused the rest of them to come on board:

Smallpox.

My phone rang at 1:00 a.m. Donna had long since stopped waking at something so trivial as a phone call and by 2:00 I sat in the Situation Room.

Nancy McNally looked as tired as we all felt. "According to sources developed by Saudi intelligence, several extremist Muslim groups have arranged to buy weapons-grade smallpox manufactured by a defunct bio-weapons lab in Russia."

For once, even Percy Fitzwallace was speechless.

McNally continued. "No targets are specified, but you can bet we'll be near the top of the list."

"What are the casualty estimates?" Leo's voice, once a near-bellow, was now as papery-thin as his skin.

Fitz looked down the table. "Ten percent military," the specialist from Fort Marlene answered.

"And civilian?" the President asked.

They looked to Jack Buckland, who looked at me, sitting behind Leo and the President, "Twenty-five to fifty percent."

"I had no idea it would be that many," the President's face grayed.

I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. "I'll be happy if it's that few."

The President and Leo's eyes widened and we spent the next three hours coordinating the military and civilian responses to the threat.

The sky was still dark when I set my backpack on my desk and sorted out the stack of message slips. The phone rang and Albie Duncan's voice grated over the line.

"Mecca, day after tomorrow," he said without preamble.

"Who's coming?"

I could almost hear his grim grin spreading across his face, "Everyone."

"'Kay," I barely replied before the dial tone droned in my ear. Hesitantly, I dialed home.

"'lo?" Donna's voice was thick from sleep.

"Hey."

"What's wrong?" Irritation sharpened her tone.

"Something's come up," I began.

"No."

"I have to, Donna," I drew circles on my desk with my finger, "it's my responsibility."

"So are we, Josh."

"I know, it's just . . ."

"Just what, Josh?" I could hear the bed creak. "You promised me, before we ever started a family, that you'd put us first."

"I know . . ."

"You promised," her voice was wild, desperate.

"It's important."

She paused a moment. "Important enough to sacrifice your family?"

"Will I have to?"

"Maybe," her voice quivered. "Don't make me a widow while you're still alive. It will happen soon enough."

My own blood pounded through my veins as I pondered my Solomon's choice. Stirring absently through the morass of papers on my desk I spied a familiar piece of cardstock paper. "Hold on." I punched Leo's number informing him of my plan rather than asking permission. He yelled but did not disagree. Then I dialed the Travel Office, Albie Duncan, and the Air Force Chief of Staff, in that order before punching Donna's line again. I could hear small voices, including our tiny, fifteen-month-old Pixie, in the background. "Donna," I said firmly, "here's what we're going to do."

  
  
  
  


1. Humes, James C. Nixon's Ten Commandments of Statecraft. (1997). Scribner: NY, NY. 


	16. Denouement

  
  


Denouement 

  
  


"Sometimes she and the international friends she made could be found huddled in the kitchen. Through their exchange of recipes, they shared a bit of themselves and their respective cultures."

Carolyn Quick Tillery

At Freedom's Table(1)

  
  


"Tell me again why this is a good idea," my wife looked up from fastening a black abayah, while our four-year-old son tugged at the hem. My mother held our pixie sleeping in her arms while trying to keep our older daughter corralled.

"It keeps the family together and I still get to do my job?" I squeaked over the jet roar while wrangling our younger son in the airline seats the flight crew had bolted forward of the cargo in the belly of an Air Force C-141 . Our older son bolted but ever-faithful Agent Lurcael nabbed the little escapee before he ran too far. Handing his weapon to another agent, he swung my boy around in the empty space in the hold between the seats and the cargo until the toddler collapsed in giggles.

Albie Duncan regarded us over the rim of his glasses but said nothing as my mom handed off the children to Donna while donning her own long robe.

Amidst this mayhem, the Protocol Attache from the Embassy cleared his throat. "Remember, you are in Saudi Arabia, Mrs. Lyman. Whenever you leave the house you should be wearing an abayah and, at least, an hijab covering all of your hair." He held out a scarf.

"What about the niqab over my face?" Donna asked as she and my mother helped each other arrange their scarves.

"No," I replied.

"It would be a sign of respect," Duncan argued.

"It would be a sign of disrespect to my wife and my mother, Albie," I disagreed. "The abayah and hijab will be enough."

"Mr. Lyman," the attache hesitated when the plane lurched, "the area around Riyadh is extremely conservative and . . ."

I cut him off, "What else?"

He gaped like a fish.

"Excellent," I said sharply. "Let's go." I scooped up my older daughter and followed Agent Lurcael down the ladder to the tarmac, then turned and helped Donna, who carried the pixie, and my mother, who herded the boys, down the steep steps. The embassy cars sat running about thirty feet across the pavement. I looked over to speak to her as we walked, but she had fallen behind me, several steps back. I paused for her to catch up. She shook her head but I turned around and walked back to her and whispered, "Full and equal partners, Donna. It's a promise we made before God and one I intend to keep from now on."

In an instant, the weariness vanished from her face. The uncertainty that had clouded her clear blue eyes lifted like fog in sunlight. Her long-unseen smile, at once both shy and bold, lifted her countenance and she joined me, walking side by side to the cars, my partner and my equal.

We never saw the photographer, but the picture of our not-so-little family, was picked up by Reuters and appeared in worldwide newspapers the next day-September 11, 2006. At first we lived in the Embassy, which Donna said was like living in a dormitory, but after a week we moved to a comfortable home near the Embassy. Celebrating the Shabbat meal on Friday evenings was, in the beginning, pretty scary because we were, in essence, breaking the Saudi law against the public practice of any religion other than Islam. Blessedly, the mutawah left us alone.

For the first few days of the peace conferences I endured the Arab equivalent of "hen-pecked husband" jokes but, within a week, the representative from Turkey had summoned his family and as the days dragged into weeks and the weeks into months, more and more representatives' families joined them.. Donna had developed a serious case of cabin fever within the first two weeks so I wasn't surprised when she asked after the arrival of the Turkish representative's family, "Do you think we could invite them for dinner?"

Albie nearly had a heart attack when we informed him over a late supper. "Do you know what an adder's nest you could stir up? There's rules, boy, and if you . . ."

"Albie," I sliced through his argument, "my lovely wife, in addition to being the mother of four pre-school children and the wife of the Deputy Chief of Staff and a Senior Advisor to the Senior Staff, is the undisputed Queen of Research." She grinned at that. "I would not be surprised if she already has both the wife of the Ambassador and the Embassy Protocol Attache on speed dial and has befriended a sympathetic senior member of the mutawah." Her blush confirmed my suspicion. "We'll be fine."

Duncan looked only moderately relieved but he looked pleasantly shocked by the end of the actual dinner when the Turkish representative invited us to his home the next week. By the end of Ramadan, the families of more than half of the representatives had joined them.

Leo sounded weaker with each daily phone call, "Hoynes is losing ground, Josh," he rasped, "Announcement of a treaty sure could go a long way towards making it up in the few days before the election."

"I know, Leo," I swallowed hard. "You sent me over here to make this happen and I can't even . . ."

"Just do it right, Josh," he interrupted, "no matter how long it takes." Static popped across the line. "How's everybody? The kids?"

I smiled at his lighter tone. "Growing so fast I'm not sure you'd recognize them."

"That's what kids do. How about your ladies?" "Ladies" was his collective name for Donna and my Mom.

"They have become quite the social doyennes. The wives of the representatives have organized play dates, shopping trips, moms' day out, dinner parties-Sunday night we're fixing cabrito for the Saudi delegate who happens to be a grand-nephew of the king."

"What in the hell is cabrito?"

"Barbecued goat," I explained. "Hoynes sent his recipe."

"Can they eat goat?"

"We're substituting lamb, just to be sure."

"You do that," he warned. "How's it going, with you and Donna, I mean?"

"Good, Leo. For the first time, in a long time, it feels like we're really together."

"You two make a good team," he blurted.

I chuffed. "It's a shame I had to come half-way around the world to make it right."

"Well, don't screw it up."

"Donna and me or the treaty?"

"Both," he replied gruffly and hung up.

The cabrito went over well, the Sheikh was impressed. The evening had been pleasant and, while our children played together, we talked of family, school, home-everything but the peace talks. 

As his family was leaving he turned and shook my hand, "I was wondering, Mr. Lyman," his English bore traces of Oxford, "if you would join me in my family's private mosque for mid-morning prayer tomorrow?"

"But, I'm Jewish," I stammered.

"Do we not pray to the same God?" His expression was earnest, open.

"Yes, we do," I replied after a long moment's thought.

"We look forward to seeing you, then."

I nodded and, the next morning-Election Day in the United States-- I stood, praying, beside members of the Saudi household. When the time ended, as I stuffed my grandfather's yarmulke in my pocket and folded his tallith before slipping it into my backpack, the Saudi delegate turned to me and said, "These negotiations have taken long enough, don't you think?"

I nodded, dumbstruck, and followed him into the conference room.

Leo was too ill to make the final trip to Riyadh so I joined his best friend on that fateful journey. It was not lost on me that, as the lead White House official on the negotiating team, my status as a Jew had never been more important. I was Joshua (who succeeded Moses), crossing over into Canaan. Shaking hands with my counterpart from the Saudi delegation, I breathed the word I'd prayed to use, "Salaam, my friend."

He smiled and responded, "Shalom."

When I called Leo to tell him it was over, that the terrorism was over, he sighed, "Thank God." Breathlessly he paused before continuing. "You did it."

"You did it, Leo," my protest beamed across a secure satellite uplink.

"Your father, your grandfather would be proud of the legacy of peace you've given your children, Josh."

I tried to protest but the words caught in my throat.

"I'm proud of you, too, you know." Static popped across the line, but his voice was stronger than it had been since . . . "No man could have asked for a better son, Joshua." He hurried as the signal faded. "I'll see you later."

"Leo!" I cried out, but he was gone. I stared at the mute phone, tears coursing across the creases the war had imprinted on my face.

"Later," I promised, knowing that the next time I saw him he would not be suffering anymore.

With his beloved Mallory by his side, he left us that night. Somewhere over Europe, Ireland I was to later learn, my phone rang. I hesitated before taking the phone from Donna's quaking hand, but as soon as I heard Sam's quavering voice, I knew. Vainly Donna and I tried to comfort each other before settling for simple "I love yous." I paused before the door to the Presidential salon, asking myself just how you tell someone his closest friend and confidant was gone. As I stepped through the door I knew there was little else to say. "Sir, he's gone."

The President looked up, disbelief quickly replaced by relief then grief. His thick glasses made him look like a mole and failed to hide the tears welling in his eyes. "When?"

I perched on the edge of the chair next to his. "Just a few minutes ago, sir."

He fidgeted idly with the report he'd been reading. "Mallory was with him?"

I nodded. "And Jordan."

His shoulders slumped, his head drooped and his voice thinned. "I should call Abbey." He reached for the phone. "Oh, Josh?" he called and I poked my head back in the room. "Why must each victory come with such terrible loss?"

1. Tillery, Carolyn Quick, At Freedom's Table: More Than 200 Years of Receipts and Remembrances from Military Wives, Cumberland House: Nashville, TN. 2001. 


	17. Leaving Emerald City

  
  
Leaving Emerald City   
  


Many days, in a way, I was glad Leo was gone.

I missed him, like I missed my father, but I was glad he wasn't here for the dismantling of the Bartlet administration. That job fell to me-and to Donna.

After we returned from Saudi Arabia, she had returned to her Senior Advisor position and the Senior Staff assigned her the logistical side of our journey from Oz. Secure storage places for records had to be found-the President still hadn't settled on a site for his library. Everything had to be inventoried and accounted for. It was right up her alley and she did it extraordinarily well.

In addition to being Acting Chief of Staff I coordinated the transition team. Our successor's staff were good people, despite being Republicans, so that job was simple. My own personal transition, on the other hand, was not quite as easy.

"So what do you want to be when you grow up?" Sam had asked with mock earnestness.

CJ and Toby, who'd also hung around after the Senior Staff meeting in Leo's office, chuckled.

"That would require that he actually grow up," Donna ribbed but gave me a short, sweet kiss before she left the room.

"I know the Whip has offered you his Chief of Staff position," Toby fished. "And I'll be over on Andrea's staff . . ."

"I thought you were taking that position at Yale then running for the Senate," CJ leaned forward, glasses perched on her nose.

"Before that he's taking a vacation, then coming to California to manage my campaign for judge," Sam said confidently.

"Then you can visit William and me in Napa," CJ's voice rose.

"Guys," I held up my hands, "Donna and I have gotten a lot of offers but we have to decide what's best for the family." I studied the scar on my palm. "Maybe it's time for us to get out of the fishbowl of politics and give the kids a normal life."

"I'm glad to hear you s-say that," the President leaned against the door jamb to the Oval Office. "A moment, Josh?"

The ever-so-slight stutter had developed since Leo's death, and a hand tremor from September 11 had reappeared in the last week or so. I followed the President while the Senior Staff went their way.

The President waved to his desk. "They're after me to make a decision-about the library."

"It's January, sir, and . . ."

"I don't want a Presidential Library," he cut me off. "That's little more than a crypt filled with books."

I chuckled. "Then what do you want?"

"I want," he sat in his chair, feet on the Great Seal and I perched on the sofa, "I want to take the money we'd spend on some great stone edifice and really put it to good use. I want to . . ."

"We want to create the Bartlet Foundation, Josh," the First Lady strode into the room and sat on the arm of the President's chair. "And we want you to run it."

I looked from the President to the First Lady and back again.

"There's a mill on the back side of the farm in New Hampshire. It would be a great place to raise a house full of kids and we've already had it cleaned out for you."

"There are meadows and orchards and cows and horses. The slower pace and lower-stress will be great for the kids."

"You've been talking to Donna." I ran my index finger across my lips.

"I don't have to, Josh," the First Lady said quietly. 

"If that seems too bucolic for you, it's close enough to Boston for you to commute to that teaching position you've been offered at Kennedy," the President prompted.

"We could car-pool to Boston," the First Lady said slyly.

"We need you, Josh," the President leaned forward. "We need you to get this thing off the ground."

I studied the Seal and swallowed hard. Donna and the kids deserved this chance at a normal life. "What would we do?"

"What would you want to do? What do you want the Bartlet Foundation to be?"

I gazed out, across the balcony, at the blue skies, my mind tunneling back through years of memories to a watershed day in Nashua, New Hampshire. "'Surely the code of our humanity is faithful service to that unwritten commandment that we will give our children better than we ourselves received.'"

The First Lady smiled, then slid her arm across her husband's shoulder before he spoke, "I can't imagine a better legacy, Josh, for any of us."

The cold wind was as bitter as the taste in my mouth as I stood among the silent sentinels on a Virginia hill overlooking the Potomac. "So, it's off to scenic New Hampshire for the Lymans-me, Donna, Mom and all the offspring." The stone before me listened silently. "I'll be teaching at Harvard, too." I chuckled. "Pity the poor students." I buttoned my coat against the chill and shifted my weight. "I don't know when I'll be back this way again." I could see Donna, sitting patiently with our family in the requisite Suburban. "I just wanted you to know that," I could feel the tears rolling down my face, "I don't think I ever told you," I kneeled in front of the headstone, dug into my pocket for a small stone I'd brought from Riyadh, placing it directly above the chiseled cross. "Thank you, Leo. Thank you for my life."

I stood and walked back to my family, certain I could feel Leo's comforting hand on my shoulder. Sliding into the driver's seat, Donna covered my hand with hers. Words did not exist for how I felt. With one last glance I sighed, squeezed Donna's hand and slid the selector into gear. The pavement crunched beneath the tires as we left the Arlington Cemetery, taking the loop around Washington before heading north. We were still in Maryland when my older son, now five and almost too big for his toddler seat, grinned and asked, "Are we there yet?"


	18. Down By The Old Mill Stream

Down By the Old Mill Stream

  
  


"Trust me, National Register of Historic Places is a euphemism for 'Federally Protected Money Pits.'" I leaned back in an antique Adirondack chair, a glass of decaffeinated, artificially sweetened, iced tea sweating in my left hand in the muggy July twilight.

"It doesn't have to be on the Register to be a money pit," CJ observed wryly. "My dad's place was built in 1904 and needs more constant attention than William." She glanced across the side yard at her son who was playing chase with my sons, among others.

"Our house is only ten years old but the sea air is eating away at it." Mallory shifted in the chair she shared with Sam who rested his chin on her head.

Toby tossed a foam baseball back toward the knot of children trampling Donna's precious grass. "There's not enough carbon in the air here to cement things together," he sniffed. "Things fall apart in clean air." 

"Bitch, bitch, bitch." Donna nudged my knees apart and deposited herself between them, her back resting against my chest, sandaled feet propped between mine on a granite boulder.

Andrea Wyatt waved to their child then lightly brushed her husband's beard with the back of her fingers. "Toby's polishing his curmudgeon schtick for the rubber chicken circuit."

"It's no schtick," he protested over a swallow of tea.

"Amen to that," CJ grinned then we listened for a while to the gurgling of the mill stream and the shouting laughter of our, combined, seven children.

"How's the book?" Mallory asked and Andy groaned.

"We're discussing the title," Toby answered curtly.

"They think Freedom's Voice is too vague," Andrea explained. 

"Welcome to Publishing Hell," CJ snorted. "They wanted to call my book Dorothy's Adventures in Oz instead of Sister, Sister."

"I think that Dorothy title's already taken, CJ," Donna observed then snitched a sip from my glass.

"Much to my relief," CJ replied.

"And L. Frank Baum's, too, I would imagine," Andrea craned her head to see the children.

Sam refilled his glass from the pitcher on the picnic table near the back door. "Didn't Baum write another Oz story?"

"So, Toby," Mallory tried again, "how's the book?"

The ringing telephone tore me away from his reply.

"They back?" Donna asked when I returned, keys in hand.

I nodded. "Ten minutes out, according to Ron. I'm going up to the house," I explained to our guests.

"I'll go with you," Sam offered and I almost refused, but . . .

I nodded and climbed into a beat-up pick-up truck.

"I never thought I'd see you in one of these," Sam said quietly.

I shrugged. "It's okay for running around the farm."

In a few minutes we stood in front of the President's beloved farmhouse, another glass of iced tea sweating in our hands. As if on cue a dark SUV crackled up the graveled drive and crunched to a stop at the bottom of the steps. Setting my glass against the front rail, I descended and tugged on the handle.

"Good evening, J-josh," the former President greeted, grasping my forearm. I pulled him to vertical then slid my arm just beneath his as he slowly ascended the steps.

"How was your trip?" I could see Ron Butterfield shaking his head out of the corner of my eye.

"G-great," Jed Bartlet's once-strong voice creaked breathlessly when we reached the top of the porch steps.

"Good evening, Mr. President," Sam offered his hand, which the President gripped first with his right, then with his left as he swayed a bit.

Even in the twilight, the former President looked exhausted.

"It was a great day," Abigail Bartlet breezed past, nodding to me as she passed. "Charlie and Zoey came up, Eleanor was there . . ."

"With some old coot of a brain surgeon," the President growled his way to the stairway to the second floor. "He had to have been at least forty." The older man crooked his eyebrow my direction.

"That's a young man, Mr. President." I grinned, following him up the stairs, my hand gently steadying his ascent.

"Good night, S-sam," he called as Sam disappeared beneath the second floor landing. After chatting a few minutes, I gathered Sam and returned to the truck.

He stared at me in the glow of the dashboard lights. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"Tell you what?" I tried the denial act.

Sam snorted. "That it was this bad." He fished through the air for the words. "That he was this bad."

"It just happens when he gets tired-like after today."

"Un-hunh."

We returned to the mill in silence with only a brief word before retiring. The next morning I found what, since moving to our tumbledown landmark, I usually found when I walked out my back door to the edge of the mill pond.

"Good morning, Josh!" the President greeted cheerily as I handed him the extra cup of coffee I always brought. He nodded to his companions. "These ragamuffins and I were just checking out the day's prospects."

"Morning, Daddy," my older son, Noah, waved, fishing pole swinging wildly as he turned to greet me. "Happy Independence Day!"

While I can't even begin to phoneticize his mispronunciation of "independence," since he was five years old it was far better than the various manglings uttered by the younger six children. The boys-my five-year-old Noah and four-year-old Kennedy, four year olds William Sawyer and Isaac Ziegler-- were lined up on the pond bank, flanking the former President, eyes intent upon his face as he explained the importance of keeping the worm very still. My older daughter, three-year-old Moss-who was named by her mother in my absence while under the influence of post-partum Demerol-sat right next to the President, proudly holding her pole relatively still. Our preemie Pixie-- who was a tiny, elfin two-tended to her duties as worm-wrangler, merrily stirring her hands in the bucket of dirt and retrieving wigglers as needed or as she wanted. It was a day to remember a day to . . .

"Josh," Sam's voice preceded him through the door, "have you seen Abigail?"

"Good morning, Sam," the President greeted and I couldn't help but smile because Sam was currently rendered speechless.

Sam's daughter's name is Abigail and that's what they call her-never Abby, always Abigail. They dress her like an Abigail-exquisite dresses, elaborate hair ribbons that my girls would leave behind in about five minutes, perfect little shoes, demure little earrings, in short, like a china doll. 

As I said before, Pixie had assumed the solemn task of worm-wrangling. I forgot to mention, however, that she had recruited an assistant who had spirited away Sam Seaborn's considerable powers of speech. Her assistant, of course, was the doll-like Abigail who, dressed in her perfect little shorts, perfect little sneakers, perfect little hair bow, ran to her father grinning a perfect little grin holding in her perfect little hand an absolutely perfect earthworm. Sam looked perfectly sick. It was the perfect start to, what I hoped would be, a perfect day.

And it was a perfect day. The President was chipper which meant Dr. Bartlet was relaxed which meant Donna and I were relaxed which meant everyone else was relaxed. We ate, we drank, we cried, we laughed, we were together again, as if we'd never been apart. It was a perfect day. Well, almost perfect.

Ron and Margaret Butterfield (who, at five months pregnant, looked like a snake who'd swallowed a basketball) surprised us by joining the party and bringing a guest-Jordan Kendall. For an instant, Mallory seemed upset but then she folded Jordan in her arms.

As it neared twilight I strolled around to the far side of the mill pond with Sam in tow. He wanted to talk, I could tell, and I knew what he wanted to talk about. I perched on a granite boulder and awaited the onslaught. It wasn't long in coming.

"You've got a great life, here, Josh," he began, scuffing his toe against the granite. "Donna, the kids, you-you look great, like you were meant to be here."

"Maybe."

"That makes it really hard for me to do this--to remind you . . ."

"I can't come to San Diego, Sam."

His face fell. "I need you, Josh."

I shook my head. "You've got everything it takes to win that judgeship, Sam."

"This race was the first step. We were going to do this together."

"I know but . . ."

"Is it Donna?"

"No."

"It's the President, isn't it?" his face reddened. "He set up that foundation to keep you here to take care of him."

"It's not the President, it's not Donna, it's not the Foundation, Sam." I pulled a neck chain and medallion over my head and tossed it to him. His eyes widened at the sight of the red Medic Alert caduceus. "My DC cardiologist was a real comedian. Just before he releases me from the hospital after Rosslyn he comes into my room and tells me he's got good news and bad news." I studied the skink skittering across a fallen tree branch by the water. "The good news is, the arterial repairs they made came with a lifetime guarantee." I licked my lips while he studied my face. "The bad news is, they didn't expect that lifetime to last more than ten years. That was seven years ago, Sam."

His shoulders fell and he rubbed the medallion with his thumb. "Does Donna know?" he asked quietly.

"She's the only one other than Dr. Bartlet."

"What does she say, Dr. Bartlet, I mean?"

I rubbed my hand on my chin before answering. "If I behave myself, I might make it to Noah's bar mitzvah."

"I don't know what to say." 

I shrugged.

He held out the chain which I retrieved and strung around my neck.

"So, what's the plan?" he said, hesitantly.

"Get Donna through school. Get the kids in school. Endow their college funds. Finish restoring that damned, money-eating hovel she loves so much."

"Daddy!" my children ran ahead of my wife, then swarmed me for hit-and-run hugs before entertaining themselves chasing after the lightning bugs in the meadow beyond the mill pond.

"And in the meantime," I paused to pull Donna to me, wrap my arms around her and prop my chin on her shoulder, "I plan to make love to my wife as often as I can for as long as I'm able."

"That's my man," she turned her head and beamed at me, her smile irresistible so I kissed her.

Sam just grinned then walked halfway around the pond to where Mallory was waiting.

"I love our life." Donna leaned her head against mine while we gazed on our family then our friends. "It's more than I could have hoped for."

"It's more than I deserve."

She spun around sharply, her eyes meeting mine. "Don't say that. Don't ever say that."

I grinned sheepishly and she turned and settled back into me. "Thank you," I whispered into her soft hair, "for my life."

Gently, so gently, she pressed a kiss into the palm of my left hand. "I am to my beloved . . ."

I kissed her right palm then knitted our fingers together, laying them over her heart, our children's laughter dancing like the lightning bugs in the summer twilight, ". . . as my beloved is to me."


	19. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

  
  


Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her . . ."

Proverbs 31:10-11 (Scofield Reference Edition)

  
  


I love my wife. She can refinish furniture while telephonically harassing politicians with a home-prepared meal on the stove and the children-now grandchildren-- creating mayhem around her. She's always been able to do it-even while finishing her degree from Harvard in 2009. I still taught there-compressing my schedule into three long days so I could devote the other two to the Bartlet Foundation. On the days I taught, we carpooled to Boston with Dr. Bartlet, who'd returned to practice at Boston General. Donna would attend classes while I harassed ignorant students then we'd hurry back to the mill to tuck our brood into their soft, warm beds. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we conducted the business of the Bartlet Foundation from offices in the renovated barn behind the Bartlet's farmhouse. Our emphasis on children allowed us to dabble in many issues but the nearest and dearest to our hearts were health and education-not just in the United States but in the world.

Ostensibly, the offices of the Bartlet Foundation were in Boston, but we, seemingly, never met there. We'd make reservations for the attendees of our little meetings at some of the finest hotels in that historic city but, somehow, they'd cajole the President, Mrs. Bartlet and me into dragging them back to New Hampshire. It certainly wasn't the accommodations-we once had an ex-Prime Minister of France sleeping on a cot on the mill floor and many former and future heads of state have curled up in the cabinet beds in the kids' rooms while the kids camped on the mill floor.

In the mornings, the President would amble over to the pond and drop a hook in the water, the kids following soon after. I'd lurch down the stairs and fix coffee for the President and me-no Lyman child ever needed any extra caffeine-then flop in one of the hundred-year-old chairs to read the morning paper retrieved, more often than not, by Ron Butterfield who would also drown a worm after fixing himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Donna would, while we fished, prepare a simple breakfast-fruit, local breads and jams, cereals-and set it on the table. Our guests, waked either by the aroma of the coffee or the mayhem at the mill pond, would wander downstairs, confusion contorting their faces before they joined us at the water's edge. The kids would grow bored and, either, go to school on school days or gambol (Sam's corrupted me) around the farm leaving the grownups to their grown-up discussions. 

By this time Margaret would have figured out that we, yet again, we not coming to the barn and would, with exaggerated exasperation, scold us mildly before wandering to the house to help Donna while remaining close enough to perform her duties as Executive Assistant to Josh Lyman, Executive Director of the Bartlet Foundation. Clever CJ called it Mill Pond Diplomacy. Sam occasionally referred to it as Itemized Deduction Diplomacy (although they were eliminated in 2003) but trust wiseacre Toby Ziegler to coin his own wry appellation: Wormicide Diplomacy (he was, at the time, baiting a hook for Isaac while discussing child labor with a prominent Pakistani businessman). Whatever it was called, it worked: we were able to negotiate agreements that raised either the standard of living or the educational opportunities of nearly a third of the world's children-including the ones in the United States.

If they sound like halcyon days, they were. But the silver lining that was our life never completely obscured the dark cloud behind it. Time was not our ally. We'd decided early on to live as simply as possible. As much as a philosophical choice, it was a pragmatic one: Donna would need every penny we could muster to raise our family after I was gone. Every penny my Dad left me was put into trusts for the children. My salary at the Foundation was not even one-third what I'd made in Washington, so we did like most Americans: we tightened our belts. We paid off credit cards; we bought used cars for cash; we traded tutoring for produce and eggs, hunting rights for meat. I did the rubber chicken circuit when it didn't interfere with the family or Foundation. With a two-hundred-fifty-year-old mill to restore, we learned to do a lot of the work ourselves.

We learned a lot. I learned a lot. Once, we'd invited a representative from one of the Baltic Republics to discuss conditions in orphanages, but weren't making much progress. After he retired for the evening I descended the stairs to the mill floor, hoping to work out my frustration on some plastering (I know, I never imagined myself doing it, either). About midnight I heard a noise behind me and turned to find the representative standing in a plaid robe.

"Trouble sleeping, sir?" I returned to my trowel.

He watched for a moment before answering, "You're doing it wrong." He stepped up and gently took the tray and trowel from me, working the material before applying it to the bared lathing with a sure hand. "My father was a plasterer," he explained. "And his father."

"And you?"

"Many days I labored by my father's side, hating every moment." He smoothed another of my strokes. "Now I long for the simplicity," he loaded his trowel again, "the predictability of an honest craft."

"We all want simplicity and honesty, sir."

He eyed me critically. "How old is this place?"

I rubbed my hand across a weathered beam. "According to the tax records, it was built sometime in 1761.

"How did you come to own it?"

I watched his patient, efficient work. "President and Mrs. Bartlet offered it to us when we moved to New Hampshire. My wife fell in love with it-God only knows why-and we asked to buy it."

"It is a good, well-built place." He wave his trowel at the pegged posts supporting the next floor. "My home with built in 1849, but the house I grew up in was built sometime in the 1600s. There's something humbling about being a steward of history."

"Yes, sir, there is," I swept around the mill stone, watching as he took odd tools and scraps and incised a design into the wet plaster.

"You'll mill wheat, correct?"

"And corn and buckwheat." The design took form, ears and sheaves interwoven intricately.

As the sun sneaked its first furtive rays through the windows he stepped back and lay down his tools. Treading wearily on the steps he filled a mug from the coffeemaker then sat carefully in one of the chairs while regarding the fishermen over the rim of his mug.

"Nobody," he began when I'd sat in the next chair, "intended for it to be this way. Nobody wants to cage up a child, Mr. Lyman." He sipped quietly. "To do anything else is so very expensive."

I watched him carefully, trying to ferret out any hint of pecuniary motive. All I saw was a man trying to do so very much with so very little. "If I could find you some help, not money but discreet help, would you be willing to accept it?"

He nodded quickly, almost shyly, before taking a seat at the pond bank. "Who will catch the biggest fish?" he asked and five hands shot into the air. Donna leaned over the back of my chair and planted a kiss on the top of my head.

"He accept?" she slid her hand down my shoulder.

I knitted my hand with hers. "Yeah."

"You did well, then."

I shook my head. "I was just around when it happened."

"All the better." She tugged me to my feet.

"All the better," I agreed and followed her to the water's edge.


	20. The Measure of Days

  
  
The Measure of Days   
  


Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know what time I have here.

Psalms 39:4 (Scofield Reference Edition)

  
  


It's not so bad-knowing your remaining days are limited. It's actually quite liberating. Suddenly you have permission, an imperative even, to focus your attention on what's truly important. It's okay to buy burial plots and funeral plans; you keep your insurance policies up-to-date; you nurture your family, cultivate your friendships. In short, you arrange your life so, when the end comes, you can only lament the days unlived rather regret the past days squandered. Or at least you try.

Nothing causes a man pause like the specter of his own mortality. Since Rosslyn, May had been a time of fear for us all and, as the expected expiration date on my surgery loomed and passed, that malaise spread to the months around it. I was in a funk with no reason to be, really.

Not that I had any time for a funk-the children were busy, Donna ran herself ragged with Foundation business, Foundation business took me to DC one week a month, my mom was beginning to grow weary with age, the President was growing frail, and Sam was running for Congress.

I know what you're thinking: I was running his campaign. Well, much to my chagrin, I wasn't. But I was consulting, much to the chagrin of the guy who was running the campaign. While campaigning, Sam was also promoting his just-published biography of President Bartlet who, by the way, loved the book. So things were a bit hectic, too hectic for me to keep my appointment with my cardiologist for my annual check-up. My cardiologist would not be denied. She, basically, shanghaied me, with the assistance of my wife and department chair, on the last Friday before election day, poking, prodding, testing, evaluating all day long. At the end of the day she sat us both in the guest chairs in her office with a scowl. "I know why you were avoiding this check-up, Josh."

I leaned forward, "Dr. Bartlet, I . . ."

"Save it," she grinned, "nobody likes bad news. Not even doctors."

Donna grabbed my hand and squeezed so hard my fingers went numb.

"I know you're worried about the future," Dr. Bartlet continued. "I know you want to be able to make some plans. I think you could probably worry about how you plan to hold bat mitzvahs in the very Gentile state of New Hampshire."

I just blinked stupidly so she continued.

"I'm not sure how, I really don't care how, but I'm sure Donna gets the credit, somehow, you keep getting better, relatively, instead of worse. It's like you set out to make liars of all of us doctors who only gave you ten years."

Tears rolled down Donna's face.

"So what's the bad news?" I asked quietly.

Abigail Bartlet's face fell. "Same as always: it could happen tomorrow-stroke, embolism, ruptured aneurysm. But I must tell you," she handed Donna a tissue, "that I'm less worried about that today than I was three years ago."

And so we found out, yet again, we were beating the odds. Our luck was holding. I wish we could have shared some of that luck.

As I said before Dr. Bartlet so rudely interrupted us, Sam was running for Congress. And, of course, he won. Not surprising since he was Sam Seaborn and savvy political wife Mallory O'Brien Seaborn had chosen that time to be pregnant with their second child. So you had a smart, attractive, intelligent candidate with smart, attractive, intelligent and pregnant wife (let's not forget the virtually perfect Abigail, either)-how could they not win? Unsurprisingly, Mr. Seaborn went to Washington.

Donna and I flew to San Diego to help them drive their two cars across country. For five days we traveled through places with names like Las Cruces, El Paso, Dallas, Texarkana, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville and Bristol-each place unique yet distinctly American. Somewhere around Jackson, Tennessee-we had filled up with Rendezvous ribs in Memphis-we stopped for fuel and, across the hoods of the cars we were driving-he in the SUV and me in the Volvo wagon-we knew, we promised each other silently, that the next time we made this trip, our destination would be the White House.

By the end of January, 2011, Sam had settled in nicely with a few good committee posts and some legislation sponsorships. I was spending my week-a-month on the Hill, harassing legislators on behalf of the Bartlet Foundation and, of course, my chief harassee was Congressman Seaborn. I was, in fact, on my way to see him when he nearly bowled me over in the corridor.

"Sam?"

"It's time," he half-ran backwards, "Mallory!"

I ran after him, driving him to George Washington Medical Center where Mallory was already admitted. "Good luck!" I called after him as nurses threw a paper gown at him. An hour later he leaned out the door, a bundle in his arms and a grin on his face and called out, "Boy!" before ducking back inside. Five minutes after that he nearly fell into the hall, snatched off the paper cap before turning and practically hanging onto the window in the door.

My daughter Joan-Pixie-was born three-months early. Donna had gone into labor suddenly and we'd rushed to the hospital. Six hours later, after unsuccessful attempts to stop the labor, Pixie began her fight for survival. It was a terrifying delivery, the baby absolutely silent in the doctor's hand (yes, she fit easily in one hand) and her first cry sounded more like the mewl of a newborn kitten. She was blue at first, then turned bright red as she battled to live. It had been a desperate situation, but the doctors had let me stay throughout. They had just thrown Sam out. This was not good.

Ignoring the nurses I ran down the hall to him. Through the window I could see the frenzied activity.

"Mallory," tears streamed down Sam's face, "something went wrong and . . ."

"She'll be okay, Sam," I hung my hand on his shoulder and waited with him.

Forty-seven minutes later the doctor's frenzy stopped. Slowly, reluctantly, she looked at the clock, then took off her mask.

"The bleeding wouldn't stop, Mr. Seaborn," she explained. "Though we tried every means available to us, your wife did not survive."

Sam blinked, slowly, swallowing hard.

"The baby?" I asked.

"He's fine; they've just taken him up to the newborn nursery."

Sam nodded vacantly eyes focused in the room. "Can I see her?" he rasped.

The doctor looked at me and I nodded. "Let's give them a minute to get her ready for you, okay?"

He nodded again and stood silent, swaying until the nurse motioned us in.

When we returned to the hall again he fell back against the wall. "I should know what to do next . . ." he choked then slid slowly to the floor, arms propped on his knees and head buried in his hands. 

I followed him down, saying things I don't even remember now, making promises I had to keep, noticing a light flash near us. I looked up and the photographer grinned defiantly before scurrying away like the insect he was. The picture appeared in some rag the next day.

Toby and Andrea arrived, Toby leaning even more heavily on his cane at the somber news. Andrea helped pull Sam to his feet and we flanked him, half-dragging, half-carrying him to the newborn waiting room. Leaving him with Andrea and Toby, I stepped to the hall, beginning the awful business tasks of helping my best friend bury his wife.

Much of my career has entailed giving bad news over the telephone. I know how to do that; how could I do this? My first call was to Donna, who jumped on the first train down. My second call was to Jenny O'Brien, Mallory's mom. My third was to CJ, the fourth to the Bartlets, the fifth to Sam's mom. I checked each item off the list I'd organized in my head-only the list was for me and not someone young, healthy like Mallory. It should be me, God, not her.

We all let business numb our emotions for several days until the funeral. We picked up the baby from the hospital and his first trip was to his mother's funeral. I'll never forget the sight of my friend, baby son in his arms and daughter by his side, kneeling at his wife's grave. Try though they did, the vultures, the press could never capture the abyssal depths of that grief.

He was cool to me for days after that, weeks really. Though Donna and I stood godparents of Samuel Mallory Seaborn, there was something not right between us; I knew what it was.

Donna had stayed with Sam a lot and she, Andrea and CJ had gotten the house ready for the reception after the baptism. Old friends and new attended, but by evening the crowd had thinned out to just our little Bartlet clan. Sam was on his second scotch when he looked from the baby to me, hatred in his eyes. The room seemed to fall silent, the weeks' tension strangling any conversation.

Quietly I walked to him, took the glass out of his hand and swallowed the remaining contents. "You're right, Sam," I said roughly, looking him in the eye. "It should have been me."

Shock registered on his face, then embarrassment. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I shouldn't think that . . ."

"Don't be," I said firmly.

Donna folded her arms around him. "It's nothing we haven't thought a thousand times since she died."

CJ moved closer, brushing her fingers across his brow. "I spent a lot of time looking for reasons when Will was murdered. I wish now I'd just worried about finding ways to carry on."

Toby pushed himself to his feet, Andrea following, clutching his free hand. "Before Isaac, we buried a son," he said quietly, "and I spent the next several years clinging to my loss. I let it ruin my health, my marriage, my life. But, even though I didn't deserve them, I got a lot of second chances," he smiled at Andrea. "You will, too." 

He shrugged slightly, putting just a little distance between us. "I know you're right," he admitted, "I just can't see how it will happen."

CJ took his hand. "It will, Sam, I promise it will."

Sam survived, raised two great children, had a successful career, a reasonably happy life, but he never ran for office again, never had quite the same spark. Many people asked us-Toby, Andrea, CJ, the Bartlets, Donna and me- about it but we never revealed the truth. If the person had to ask the question, they didn't know Sam well enough to be privy to the answer. But we knew.

How could he have been the same when half of his soul was missing?


	21. Camp Runamok

Camp Runamok

  
  


This isn't a Presidential Residence; it's a summer camp for bleeding-heart liberal Democrats and their spawn!

Unidentified Secret Service Agent

Requesting reassignment away from the Bartlet detail

  
  


Some years you never want to end and some you never want to do again. Two thousand ten, the tenth anniversary of Rosslyn, should have been the year to skip but it wasn't. The next was one I probably could have done without-well, most of it.

After Mallory's death Sam just went through the motions, doing what was expected but without his usual fervor. I spent as much time as I could in Washington but, by March it was obvious that, between single fatherhood and a broken heart, he just didn't have the spirit for his Congressional post. Luckily a seat opened up on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and somehow (with considerable work by a number of elves) his name topped the list. The hours, combined with the quiet nature of the job, appealed to him and he jumped at the chance-developing a reputation, in a few short months, of being the judge poorly prepared lawyers loved to hate. You didn't dare step into Judge Seaborn's courtroom unless you had every little thing by the letter and straight up.

On the last Friday in May, as I was returning to New Hampshire from DC, I called and informed the jurist that I was, basically, kidnaping Abigail and Samuel and he could come and get them at the mill. Toby, Andrea and Isaac rode up with me and CJ and Will flew in on Saturday. On Memorial Day, 2011, eleven fishermen, including John Leo Butterfield, greeted me when I took the President his coffee on the pond bank beginning a summer tradition that we have kept for sixteen years now: Camp Runamok.

It was, to put it mildly, chaos. The kids were sort of like the Lost Boys with Jed Bartlet as Peter Pan (without the flying). In fact, he did read Pan to them that first summer. They'd fish, they'd hike, they'd collect all things that skittered and slithered, they'd explore, they'd do anything. And the President was right in the middle. He'd appear at the pond, early in the morning, and romp and play until I'd drive him back to the farmhouse, so weary I'd have to help him up the stairs. And the next day it would start over again. It was a pace that rivaled that of the White House at its most hectic but we didn't mind: it was good to see the President so vital again. It was a golden time.

The visitors went home after Independence Day and the Lost Boys dwindled to the usual five (John Leo Butterfield had become a de facto member of the tribe). It was then that the President started disappearing. 

First he'd forget the day, then mix up events that had happened in the past. By August he'd ask the kids their names, honestly knowing he should know but not being able to bring it to his tongue. His body grew fragile, bruising at the slightest bump. He stopped coming to fish when he got lost on his way over and his detail had to find him. After that, Ron or I would bring him over, watching the cane pole sway like the childrens'. After Labor Day, he stopped coming by to fish, the morning chill too much for him. I'd go up to the house to conduct business, talking over every aspect of the Foundation with him even though he'd ask the same questions seemingly a thousand times. 

By October the days darkened, as did his mind. Some days there'd be sunshine and clarity but those days grew shorter. I remember the last day-how clear it and his mind were-golden, rare and precious. We talked business, we talked politics, we talked family. He laughed a lot, I remember, smiling at Mrs. Bartlet when she chided him for not eating his green beans. After lunch I helped him to his study to a wing chair by a sunny window where he often read for hours, Peter Pan on the table nearby. Despite the sun he was chilly and Mrs. Bartlet covered him with a quilt given to him during the first Presidential campaign in 1998. I followed her back to the kitchen, where we talked about Elizabeth, Eleanor and Zoey while washing dishes. After about an hour she slipped back to the study to check on him. When she didn't return I followed and, rounding the corner, I spotted her, kneeling in front of him, her hand cupping his placid face. I paused a moment, laying my hand on her shoulder, before stepping to the phone to begin again the business of burying a friend.

Like Brigadoon, Camp Runamok rose from the mists New Hampshire every June but it was not the same. Pan was gone and, try though they did, the new pans-Ron, Sam, CJ, me and even Toby-just couldn't fly like Peter.


	22. Follow the Yellow Brick Road

  
  
Follow the Yellow Brick Road   
  


After leaving office the President would often receive calls from the Democratic leadership-advice, strategy, courtesy calls. As his condition had deteriorated, I had increasingly waylaid those calls, speaking at first as I knew he would then later as I thought. I expected those calls to cease after his passing and that Donna and I would spend the rest of our days running the Foundation, lecturing (she was more in demand than I was, to my chagrin and delight) and teaching.

But the calls continued. In fact, they increased through the years, especially as the House debated the Child Health Care Reform Act of 2014. You may remember we fought this battle once before but the mandate had to be renewed and, again, the Republicans were hanging all sorts of odd amendments on it. The Democrats had selected some milquetoast kid to represent them on Capitol Beat and I (actually Donna, too; they didn't call us JoshandDonna for nothing) was called on to represent the Foundation. 

The pundits batted the issue back and forth zinging us questions occasionally before I finally lost my temper exclaiming, "Why are we the only nation in the industrialized world that values its animals more than its children?"

Donna cringed at that, but it was what I thought. It was a long fight, but the Act was eventually passed, without most of the extraneous amendments and riders, in April-leaving just enough time to get ready for Noah's bar mitzvah in May just before the convention where delegates of the party of the people would undoubtedly hand the extremely popular governor of California the Presidential nomination. Because of our performance on Capitol Beat-and various other shows-we, Donna and I, were expected to hit the road on behalf of the candidate. Our first meeting was in Nashua on the last Saturday in May. There was just one problem: Kennedy was playing in a baseball tournament near Boston.

When the kids started participating in their various activities we had, oftentimes, split up to cover more ground. But we'd noticed the family cohesiveness had begun to flag so Donna instituted the first rule of being a Lyman-Mossketeers: all for one and one for all. As much as possible, the entire family would attend each event and cheer on the participant with as much gusto as they would like to hear when they were competing. This was relatively easy as long as the kids all played baseball but then Noah started wrestling with a club in Concord. Kennedy played spring, summer and fall baseball for the team in Nashua. Moss-tall like her mother and her brother Noah-played volleyball for her school. Pixie, from the age of four, was interested in nothing but cheerleading and gymnastics and had earned a spot on a competitive squad in Boston. It was worse than the Presidential schedule. It's a good thing we had experience with organizing the Presidential schedule, now wasn't it?

All of the kids' events went on a master schedule with conflicts highlighted in red. Possible political events were cross-checked against the kids' schedules so that we might take advantage of "serendipitous" scheduling as much as possible. For example, we scheduled Boston events when we were in town either on business or for Pixie's practices. Noah, Kennedy and Moss' schedules took them all over the New England and campaign events were scheduled around as many games/meets as possible. During the month of June, the whole tribe from Camp Runamok came along, prompting the DNC chairman to refer to us, only half in jest, as the Von Trapp Family Singers. If only I'd known all the words to "Edelweiss . . ."

The Democratic candidate took New England but the Republicans captured the election. Donna and I returned to the mill, enjoying our little lives until July of 2016 when Toby and Andrea came to pick up Isaac.

We knew something was up; CJ, Toby and Andrea had been sneaking glances at each other all weekend. After the fireworks on the Fourth, the kids tumbled into the yard for moonlight tag leaving the adults somewhat alone.

"Alright, Toby," Donna warned, "spill it."

"Spill what?" his mock-innocent face had improved only marginally during his years working with the Congress.

"The party," CJ explained, "was disappointed with the performance of the candidate in the last election."

"No shit," Sam commented, taking another swig from his lager.

"The biggest disappointment was that the candidate should have been electable-he was safe, attractive, popular, middle-of-the-road," Andrea continued.

"For the next election," CJ leaned forward, "they want to step outside the mainstream."

Donna looked at me fearfully.

"Guys," Sam warned.

"The leadership," Toby pressed on, "was very impressed with the way you delivered New England in two-thousand fourteen.

CJ gestured, "They've done some polling and your personal appeal numbers were through the roof."

"Guys," Sam interrupted again.

"Josh," Andrea hesitated only a moment. "The leadership wants you to consider running for President."

Donna's plastic glass thumped on the soft brick, lemonade splashing her now-empty chair.

"In fact," Toby fidgeted with his glass, "they're a little surprised you hadn't come to them with the idea."

I stared into the darkness, trying to identify the owners of the shouts and whoops emanating from it, idly rubbing my thumb through the condensation on my glass before taking a gulp. I looked at Sam, whose eyes begged permission, which I gave with a nod, before quietly stepping through the keeping room and up the stairs to our bedroom. Donna leaned wearily by the window, one arm wrapped in front of her, other arm propped on that, fingers sliding across thin lips. She turned her head slightly when a popping board indicated my entrance.

"They don't know, do they?"

I sat in the rocker next to her. "Sam's telling them now."

"Why now? I thought he told them years ago. I thought . . ."

I shook my head.

"What do you think?"

"I thought it was supposed to be Sam."

"Not without Mallory."

"Did he tell you that?"

I smiled. "He didn't have to."

She spoke to the window. "Joshua, I think you'll either make yourself sick or get yourself killed."(1)

"There's worse things than dying for your country, Donna."

"You almost did that already, Josh." She leaned over the arm of the chair, eyes fiery. "Just make sure you're risking your life for your country and not your ego."

I grinned and grabbed her hands. "We can make a difference, Donna. We can make a real difference."

"We better." Fear clouded her attempt at a smile.

I pulled her into my lap. "Love you."

"Love you, too." She sat up with a grin. "But you get to tell the kids."

The kids were less than enthusiastic. Their mother invoked the "All for one" rule and they fell into line. We spent the next year preparing-discreetly fundraising, working out strategies, mapping campaign stops all the while maintaining as normal a life as possible.

On New Year's Day, 2018, we stepped onto the "Lyman for America" campaign bus for a ride across America. We scheduled campaign stops around our kids' activities: wrestling and gymnastics meets in the winter, baseball and volleyball in the spring. During that time, I think we shook every single hand in America at least twice. But something else happened-something that had not happened to me during the campaigns of 1998 and 2002: we got to know Americans. We met parents, much like ourselves, whose lives revolved around their children and their children's future. We met children, many much less privileged and less loved than our own, who, nonetheless, maintained hope for a brighter future. We played a pickup baseball game in every town we could-getting to know our opponents as friends. It was less a strategy than a philosophy-which the pundits could not understand. They created derisive nicknames for us: "The Von Lyman Family Singers," "Josh Lyman and his Traveling All-Stars," "The Griswolds Go to Washington." Our children felt, for the first time, the sting of rancor. But they taught us a lesson. Instead of becoming cynical, they displayed hope.

"Why do they say those things about us?" Noah asked his cohorts as they relaxed around a picnic table at Arkansas Post State Park.

"They don't understand us," Kennedy began. "They don't understand that we're not about winning."

I sat up in my chair behind a shade tree, interest piqued at this little exchange.

"Then what are we about?" Moss crunched her favorite barbecue chips.

"We're about hope," Pixie explained.

"What's hope?" Samuel squeezed in between Abigail and William.

"Hope is the evidence of things not seen," Isaac explained.

"That's faith, Ziegler," Will disagreed.

"Then what is hope?" Abigail asked.

The only sound for a few minutes was chips crunching then Moss spoke. "Hope is having four kids when you could die any day."

I nearly gasped. Although we'd disclosed all my medical conditions at the outset of the campaign, I didn't know if they really understood.

"Hope," Pixie talked around a pickle, "is believing a three-month-premature baby can be anything she's willing to work hard enough to be."

"Hope," sixteen-year-old Noah offered, "is daring to fall in love when you've watched three thousand people die."

"Hope," Will brushed the hair out of Samuel's face, "is raising your kids on your own even though your heart is broken." Abigail nodded.

"Hope," John Leo Butterfield said quietly, "is giving up everything to follow someone you believe in." Ron had retired from the Secret Service to run security for the campaign.

"Hope," Isaac Ziegler playfully shoved Will Sawyer, "is believing the people will respect you for saying what's right instead of what they want to hear."

"Hope," Kennedy stared at the behemoth in which we traveled, "is putting your ten kids on a bus, getting to know America and letting them get to know you, and believing that they will vote for you because you are the right people for the job."

"Do you think we'll win?" Abigail asked.

"It doesn't matter," Noah shrugged.

"Why not?" Samuel asked.

Noah, Kennedy, Will and Isaac looked at each other but Kennedy replied, "Because we're doing the right thing. And we're trusting that America will, too."

"Time to go!" Donna called from the bus and we resumed our journey. By the time we reached San Diego and the Convention, we had sewn up the nomination. By the time we returned to the mill, taking five months to meander across parts of the nation we hadn't seen before, we were dead even with the Republicans. But that election taught me to trust that Americans will do what's right. Sitting in my keeping room, at four minutes until midnight on Election Day, 2018, I picked up the phone and my opponent conceded. Two months later, on a bitter but clear day, my wife held the Bible while my children and my friends watched me, the first Jew to hold the office, swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the Assistant Director in Charge of the President's Security Detail, my old friend Vladimir Lurcael, smile.

  
  


1. I confess; I lifted this line from Michael Mann's Manhunter which was based on Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. 


	23. Return to Oz

  
  
Return to Oz   
  


These Lyman people make the Theodore Roosevelts look like the John Adamses.

Unidentified member of the White House custodial staff

  
  


When you're away for a while, it's easy to forget what an adder's nest Washington is. It only took me a month to piss of the Speaker of the House (who was a Democrat) which meant the Lyman Administration spent the next six months paying for it. Sam, who was Chief of Staff, told me often that I was more trouble than President Bartlet. I would retort that Leo McGarry never had any trouble keeping me in line to which Margaret would snort derisively from her place at what used to be Delores Landingham's desk. Donna would usually breeze in at about this point of the conversation and just shake her head before informing me of some familial obligation for which I was late.

Sam assembled a crackerjack staff for our Presidency. Toby resigned as Andrea's Chief of Staff to become my Senior Policy Advisor. CJ came on board as Director of Communications. Sam's Deputy was his chief clerk in the District Court: Charles Young, esquire. The family was together again.

Priorities are really hard to keep straight in Washington and, when you have the top job, it can be downright impossible-unless you have a First Lady like Donna. She rewrote the job description. She orchestrated the first major structural and cosmetic renovation of the White House since the Kennedy Administration. Everything, from wiring to plumbing to carpet to lace, was updated or restored. It was begun in March of 2019 and completed during the final months of our second term. Yes, our second term. 

Donna didn't just limit herself to renovating old houses-despite the fact that the best-received joke at the 2019 Correspondents' Dinner was that the only way I'd gotten Donna to agree to return to Washington was because I'd found this great fixer-upper at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She tackled women's issues on a worldwide scale. She continued to champion causes that supported education, the environment and children. She was more like Eleanor Roosevelt that Jacqueline Kennedy and she did it all while raising four teenagers who were just as apt to slide down the bannister as walk down the stairs (figuratively, of course).

Teenagers in the White House-now there's an interesting concept. At first, they were a bit like country mice but, being the smart kids they were, they adapted-sometimes too well. Noah, who turned eighteen during our first term, learned on that day that just because your Secret Service detail may be old enough to buy liquor, you're not. He didn't buy, but the detail busted him to his mom who scolded him only slightly because he was leaving in the fall for college-at the Air Force Academy. How ironic was it that our son, who was born on Air Force One, wanted to pilot Air Force One? 

Kennedy, on the other hand, was a born statesman who planned to go to Harvard. Severe hearing loss from an ear infection delayed his plans slightly, but he started attending his parents' alma mater in January, 2022. Moss had medical leanings and entered Yale in the fall of 2022-with further plans to attend medical school at Johns Hopkins. Pixie wanted nothing more than to teach and entered Harvard in 2023 with plans for an Education Degree. So, shortly after the beginning of our second term, the Lymans were semi-officially "empty nesters." Our nest emptied further when my mom and Dr. Bartlet both passed away in 2023.

The extended White House renovations were somewhat of a blessing in disguise: the disruption gave us an excuse to escape to the mill as often as possible. Increasingly, visiting heads of state would request to conduct our private meetings at the mill before the public announcements at the White House. Part of the reason was the renovation but the rest of the reason was personal. 

In the years since the Treaty of Riyadh, most of the delegates had risen in their respective governments- many to the throne or chief executive. Others were prime ministers, senior advisors, members of the ruling households-and we'd stayed in touch through the years. For most, the official trip to the mill was a return visit. And so Mill Pond Diplomacy was revived-with surprising success. This aggravated the State Department, but, then, I aggravated the State Department. By nature it is a lethargic beast and there were times, especially when the Middle East situation turned grave again in '24, that quick action was needed. I called a summit and the leaders responded. In seven grueling days we'd hammered out a preliminary agreement that led to the Treaty of Ankara in 2026-the negotiating team was led by Charlie Young.

It was during that summit that Noah, soon to graduate from Air Force, called with news that he'd found, as he put it, his "Donna."

"She's smart, Dad," he'd said. "And she refuses to put up with my guff without treating me like an idiot."

"Marry her," I advised.

He did, his brother Kennedy standing as his best man, in the chapel of The Ramparts immediately after receiving his commission from the President of the United States. We both cried. He led his bride beneath the traditional sabers and took off into the sky.

Kennedy also graduated that year, summa cum laude in History, then immediately began law school at Harvard. He received his JD when Moss graduated with a degree in Biology in '26. While he was studying for the New Hampshire bar and Moss began medical school at Johns Hopkins, Donna and I campaigned for the Democratic candidates in the election of 2026. Narrowly, we lost the White House, but gained control of the Congress-due largely to the efforts of new Speaker of the House Andrea Wyatt.

When we flew back to New Hampshire in January, 2027, the newest member of the crew of Air Force One greeted us at the door-First Lieutenant Noah Lyman. He had presented us, just a month earlier, with the newest generation of the Lyman family: our grandson, Bartlet McGarry Lyman (his grandmother had a hand in the naming, I suspect). Bart Lyman: doesn't that sound like a starting pitcher for the Mets?

Kennedy, always competitive with his brother, married one of Moss' classmates in a double White House wedding with his sister, who married a member of his law class, just before Chanukkah, 2026. Pixie had been dating a classmate of Noah's for a couple of years and we had a pondside wedding in the spring of 2027.

You're probably asking yourself, "But what happened during your terms in office, Mr. President?"

That's a tale for someone else. My former Chief of Staff swears he is writing an expose of the Lyman Administration, Toby has been scribbling notes on a thousand little pads and CJ Cregg has been tapping away at her PDA. My money's on Danny Concannon. He is more than a reporter; he is an historian with the gift of writing.

Do I miss the White House, as I sit beside my pond? I'd be lying if I said I didn't.


	24. Lessons

  
  
Lessons   
  


Separately, they were strong but together they were invincible. If ever God joined together two people for life, it was Josh Lyman and Donna Moss.

Danny Concannon

Valuable: an unauthorized biography of Josh and Donna Lyman, 2026

  
  


If you're lucky and smart, you'll learn from the experience of thers the lessons life teaches along the way. Since I was seldom both at the same time, I had to learn them on my own. Here are a few:

  
  
Treaties may be agreed to by nations, but they are negotiated and enforced by men. Be both respectful and respectable and hold others to that same standard. Make sure all your friends are smarter than you are. It makes you better and work harder. Your children are your most important legacy. Craft them with care. Partner yourself, including in marriage, with persons who can challenge you without belittling you. After years of toxic relationships, I found, actually she found me, a partner who knew me and respected me. Live so that, at the end, you can only regret the days unlived and not the time squandered. I've lived fifteen years beyond any reasonable expectation and, at this point of my life, I can honestly say I haven't squandered a day. I think I'll go sit by the mill pond and watch the sun set. 


	25. Elegy

  
  
Elegy 

"If fidelity to freedom and democracy is the code of our civic religion then surely the code of our humanity is faithful service to that unwritten commandment that we will give our children better than we ourselves received." Josiah Bartlet to the VFW at Nashua, NH, during the first campaign.

  
  


I remember Josh's last day-how clear it was-golden, rare and precious. We talked business, we talked politics, we talked family. He laughed a lot, I remember, smiling at Donna when she chided him for not eating his vegetables. After lunch he walked around the mill pond to his favorite spot and the Adirondack chair he'd moved there. Despite the sun he was chilly and he wore his Presidential windbreaker. I stayed with Donna in the kitchen, watching him from the window, where we talked about Bart, Noah, Kennedy, Moss and the Pixie. She asked about Abigail and Samuel, Toby and Andrea, Isaac, CJ and Will while washing dishes. After about an hour she slipped around the stone path to check on him. When she didn't return I followed and found her kneeling in front of him, her hand cupping his placid face. I paused a moment, laying my hand on her shoulder, before stepping to the phone to begin the business of burying a friend.

I remember his life, one I'm proud to have shared along with his other friends. I remember his children, his proudest achievement. I remember his wife, the missing piece of his soul. But, most of all, I remember the legacy he worked his entire life to leave to the world. Joshua Lyman, fortified by the love of friends and family despite tragedy and illness worked tirelessly to give the world the most precious gift he knew. He gave us hope.

Shalom, my friend.

  
  


Sam Seaborn, 2027


End file.
